Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

Iowa State was 1-1 in Super Sports Week, after the women’s basketball team rallied to beat Drake and the men’s team lost. With a $11 $17 ticket waiting for me, I headed to Jack Trice Stadium hoping that the Cyclone football team would make the inevitable loss look respectable.

Interspersed with the official play-by-play, here’s what I was thinking: Continue reading →

Ames, Iowa — Now that is how you end a Super Sports Week. Article here.

Condolences to Oklahoma State University, not on the loss, but on the fatal plane crash that is a reminder there are more important things than sports.

(BTW, regarding my previous post about milestones: How’s that for one version of #600?)

Friday’s game against Oklahoma State is Iowa State’s 1137th. That much the athletics office and the NCAA agree on. But even before superficially drilling into the numbers there’s a discrepancy.

The NCAA says that through the end of 2010, Iowa State’s record was 494-587-46. Iowa State said it was 493-588-46. It is not one game in question, but three.

November 2, 1907: The Des Moines Register mentioned the controversy with this Nebraska game last year. A drop-kicked field goal bounced twice before going through the uprights. Iowa State said the four-point field goal counted, and Nebraska said it didn’t. College football rules chairman Walter Camp ruled months later that the field goal was good. The NCAA and Nebraska don’t accept that ruling. (The official NCAA record book says Nebraska is 86-17-2 in what was the 20th-most-played rivalry in history, while ISU says Nebraska is 85-18-2.) Continue reading →

By virtue of contracts, the women’s tournament is the next to go.* It’s heading to Oklahoma City, two years before the men potentially follow. Memorial Auditorium is old, and even in the Big 12 the women’s tournament pales in comparison to the men’s, but the men are likely to follow (quoted from the link above):

The Sprint Center is located in Missouri, a state that soon will not have a Big 12 member. The facility is located less than two miles from the Kansas state line, but some tax payers might not approve of an SEC state reaping rewards from the Big 12 tournament.

This continues the shifting of power from the old Big Eight southward. That era is going to lose another one of its facets soon — Kemper Arena is likely to be torn down.

In all likelihood, it would be a futile effort for Des Moines to try and get the women’s tournament, because so much would hinge on Iowa State being good those years. But even Wichita would be a little more manageable for the remainder of the Big 12 North than OKC.

*In the immediate past, there was the 11-1 decision in 2010 to keep the football championship game in Cowboys Stadium for a little while longer instead of rotation with Arrowhead Stadium. Take a second to guess the dissenting vote.