Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

It is entirely possible that both North Tama and Iowa State will go 0-fer this football season, the worst composite record since 1994 (2-17-1). NT has already been shut out twice this season — the most in 20 years.

In other words, it’s going to be a long fall.

In the “Hmm, that’s funny” category, this weekend I was making sure that my long list of Iowa State football games vs. ranked teams synced with the university’s media guide. It did not. Two read-throughs later, there’s a good reason: The numbers were changed. Below is a screen grab of the 2012 (left) and 2010 (right) media guides for the 2006 and 2007 seasons.

As you can see, 2006 Oklahoma has been bumped from 22 to 23, while 2007 Nebraska has had a #25 ranking added. The latter matches up with this chart. ESPN also archives polls going back a decade; here’s the poll for 10/8/06, before the Oklahoma game.

The kicker is that the final page of the media guide may not have been updated to reflect changes. My list has one too few #13s and one too many #14s compared to the record vs. each number, but 1972 Colorado has been revised to #14 instead of #13. According to the same historic poll tracker used earlier, that revision is wrong. (ISU is #18 in both places.)

Overall, very little changes. It’s not like anything was deliberately hidden. 2011 Oklahoma State remains the only victory against a top-six team. It’s just a little odd that such discrepancies would exist to be addressed.

Bret Blum, Cyclone Fanatic:

In fact, as part of the initiation into being a Cyclone fan, you are required to be kicked in the groin at least once.