Iowa officially loses a U.S. House seat today, now on a peer level with Arkansas and Utah. This is technically the fifth set of Iowa U.S. House districts in my lifetime. Also, we are now as far from the 2000 election as 2000 is from 1988.
UPDATE: A presidential election is always a big reminder of the passage of time, isn’t it? Suddenly your stuff seems that much older.
Oklahoma’s 70th win in the Iowa State series Saturday is another notch for the Sooners, but it’s not the highest total for either team. Oklahoma has beaten Oklahoma State more times (82 through 2011), and Iowa State has lost to Nebraska more times (86 according to the NCAA, 85 according to ISU).
In fact, 70 wins over one opponent barely makes the top 15 in raw wins. The difference between OU-ISU and the many above it is that the underdog has been able to pull out more wins along the way. For example, through 2011 Tennessee has beaten Kentucky 74 times and Vanderbilt 73, but both losers have about two dozen wins to their credit.
The top five raw win totals, based on numbers from mcubed.net: Nebraska>Kansas (91), Nebraska>Iowa State (“86”), Oklahoma>Oklahoma State (82), Alabama>Mississippi State (77), Texas>Texas A&M (76)*.
*There are some bowl projections with a meeting in the 2013 Cotton Bowl, in which case the entire state of Texas will spontaneously combust.
I’ll say the same thing I said a few weeks ago: Somebody is going to hire Iowa State’s Paul Rhoads and look very smart for doing it. Why not Auburn, where Rhoads worked for one (albeit disastrous) season as defensive coordinator in 2008?
A decade ago, when I was making a new map for Wapsie Valley for a directions booklet, I erred in the directions from Traer. I wrote “US 20 W” instead of “E”. While a minor thing, I feel it’s only right to fess up to such a long oversight.
I had occasion to revisit the issue because North Tama plays at Wapsie Valley Friday. The school isn’t at Fairbank, but at the intersection of county roads V56 and C50 southeast of Readlyn. (In addition, I reversed the order of direction alternatives on the page. There’s little need to take US 63 through Waterloo when US 20 and V49 are much faster.)
The entire booklet, detailing locations of dozens of schools in eastern and central Iowa, can be downloaded here.
KCRG has the lead wrong but the writeup right:
TAMA, Iowa – Jacob Wrage completed 13 of 19 passes for 240 yards and four touchdowns as the Redhawks moved on to the A quarterfinals with a win at Traer.
(Mostly unrelated note: South Tama is still alive in the 3A playoffs.)
Marshalltown article about NT-Starmont here. This is the first time the two teams ever played. The Starmont school is centralized in the district at the intersection infernal roundabout of IA 3 and IA 187.
They are the yin and yang of college football. One is in the top 10 of BCS teams for all-time wins, the other in the bottom 10 for all-time losses. From before the Great Depression until the mid-1990s, they played every year, and now they are again.
Iowa State has beaten Oklahoma five times out of 76 attempts — the most lopsided 50-game-plus series in Division I-A. The Cyclones’ record in the past half-century is 1-40-1.
Oklahoma’s historical record means its fanbase sincerely asks questions like “Would you consider 11-2 to be a failure this season?” and says “The season is lost” after losing to two teams in the BCS top five.
Iowa State’s history of futility is too big for a blog post, so I wrote a much longer piece here, picking out a handful of games that were notable points in the series.
Paul Rhoads has done many things as Iowa State’s coach, but beating Oklahoma is not one of them — yet.
Bring on the windmill.
UPDATE: It already wasn’t likely to happen, but Jake Knott being out for the season doesn’t help matters any.
Iowa’s third standalone Chick-Fil-A opened Thursday and a fourth will open next week.
On Tuesday*, I decided Saturday’s game was best described as the Stoppable Force (ISU’s offense) vs. the Movable Object (Baylor’s defense). A Baylor blogger thought along the same lines for a game preview, but called Baylor’s D “Immobile” instead of “Movable”.
*I didn’t write it down. Obviously a mistake on my part!
Tonight I saw the first political TV ads related to a state-level race. Both were for the state Senate district that includes Marshall and Tama counties. Both were negative.
The move is an interesting one. Depending on how you look at it, the district is both divided by and overlapping of TV markets. Eastern and central Iowa TV stations both cover events in Marshalltown, but Marshalltown plays in the CIML for sports with Des Moines teams (and now is in the western half of 4A football). For Nielsen purposes, Marshall County is in the central Iowa market while Tama County is in eastern Iowa.
(Updated to include further thoughts.)
