This is hard to believe, almost criminal ISU had such mediocre results while he was here, coupled with that Defense and Breece.

I really like Campbell, but …

4 tickets for the Oklahoma State game on September 23 in Section 9 Row 8 Seats 11-14. $150 per ticket and will sell in groups of two. Venmo and mobile tickets will be transferred. 641-751-5956

So another year, same ol crap!!
1. Two weeks in a row and we can coordinate the fly over with the end of the National Anthem.
2. Nothing against the Bells of Iowa State but that tune brings the crowd down. Need to play that right away and get it out of the way.
3. Need to find new music to get fans in the stand off their butts! Yesterday was far from electric! When the crowd needed to get into it we wouldn’t.
4. Our big go to is the headset cam and the Buff City flex for the camera… Really! Half the people didn’t even realize they were on camera!
5. And finally, the one song that gets people up and into the game, Juicy Wiggle, and they play it with 2 minutes left in the game. The person in charge doesn’t know anything about creating an electric atmosphere.

I understand bills need to be paid but let’s get some energy in our crowd. And it starts with the person in charge of selecting the audio. I watched several games last night and you could hear the crowd getting into the game. If you think our stadium is electric, go to Virgian Tech, Alabama, LSU, Clemson, Penn St. even K-State! You will see a vast difference. We need to rethink our current practice and get some energy at Jack Trice Stadium !!!

Many took our Cyclones to win and sadly were eliminated. 27 people took Iowa State including the defending champ. There were 35 people eliminated in total leaving us with 109 left.


Tiebreaker points return this year. A reminder regarding tiebreaker points: If your team wins and covers you gain an extra bonus point. If you take a undefeated team who is the underdog you gain the point for them covering plus another bonus point. As the season goes on the number of teams undefeated being a underdog greatly diminish so take advantage while you can.


I will be using ESPN's Lines. Line will be the line at kickoff for tiebreaker points



Rules/How to Play if you are new:

You can only pick teams that are undefeated (they will be bolded).

1. Pick a team you think will win that weeks game. Pick only 1 team per week.
2. Don't pm me the pick, post on here your pick.
3. You can only pick that team ONCE the entire time you are in the game.
4. The goal is to advance and be the last person standing.
5. Only games that have a FBS school facing another FBS school are eligible to be picked.
6. You have up until the start time of the game you picked to switch.
7. If your team loses, you are out for the competition.
8. If you skip a week of picks, you are out.
9. You can switch as many times up until the game you have picked officially starts.
10. If you have questions, pm me
11. Post 2 of the thread will have the possible games you can pick.
12. Post 3 will have each player and their previous week's picks.
13. You can't join in during the middle of the season.
    Please include prior weeks picks with your pick for the week.

Have any questions, pm me or ask in the thread. Thanks!

The large circle bar with only 3 bartenders doesn't work. I personally stood right up to the bar at the beginning of half-time and missed six minutes of the 3rd quarter before I got served. Either have more bartenders or lines starting at the card readers. 3 bartenders have no way of knowing who is next and to stand there and think it has got to be me next, only to wait another half an hour plus, is frustrating. Still tipped the bartender. It wasn't his fault. But come management, this is the same problem every year. Get more help in there!

I’ve been so impressed with the punting unit this year. Our punter is EVERY bit as good as Iowa's. Coverage is excellent. Being able to make field goals out to 45+ yards is a nice change. The only bad part about yesterday was the kick return squad. Nearly gave me a heart attack TWICE by misjudging the depth of kicks. The first luckily bounced into the end zone. The second lacked 3” of being 1st and goal Iowa. The other downside (and this is part due to Iowa's excellent coverage) was the lack of punt return yardage.

What do you have?

Hawkeye gal sprawled on the ground near our tailgate. Her two friends helped to support her to walk.

Saw a guy literally sleeping or passed out in his chair by an RV as we were leaving the Haunted Forest

Hawkeye Fans tried to get into some seats and were told those were they someone else’s seats. Lady said they was their season tickets. Gal responded it was here parents tickets and knew who they gave the tickets to come to sit by them. Hawk lady called the gal a *****, which the gal’s husband heard. The husband was not a happy camper and responded, “What did you just say?” Thought all hell might break loose. Hawk lady just moved on with her husband who just kinda stood in the background.

Outside of the Joel Lanning packages, how many QB rushing attempts has his offense called since he's been in Ames?

We have the same talent as K-State, yet our coach refuses to use a weapon that they consistently use..

We need to be recruiting dual threat QB's not pocket passers, until our offensive line gets a pulse. Throwing 3 yard out routes and screen passes doesn't require Peyton Manning at QB

Sold

The good: The conference is going to be pretty bad ass going forward. Especially, starting next year, no program should be automatically expected to win the conference. I’m expecting lots of competitive games that are fun to watch and new rivalries form while the pundits decide college football is now only about the Big 10 and SEC. Meanwhile, it will be fun watching weekly Big 12 games that decide the conference playoff game with multiple teams in the mix.

The bad: ISU didn’t play well and lost to Iowa again. Scoring points will be challenging and wins won’t be easy. Going to be a challenging year in conference play.

The ugly: Conference new joiners this year and next are hungry and going to make waves. The conference is going to be up for grabs and that favors programs ready to step up and stake a claim. If I look at program trends, I don’t see ISU in that category. CMC has a long leash from Pollard and he’s also stubborn. He’s going to be so far outside looking in by year 10 of his tenure.

That’s one way to avoid the buyout!

Rocco looked out of sync, stared down his receivers (and yes lots of drops), but why wasn't JJ ever in the game to maybe drive a little life into the offense? It's going to be a long season by the looks of today. Strap in.

You don’t beat Iowa playing Iowa’s game. It works for us in the B12, but we need be different when we play Iowa.

I think this is especially true in the second game of the season.

As always the one or two series we sped up against them we have success.

We have to have the worst route tree in college football!

Tired of all the 5 yard out routes. Our passing game philosophy basically gives us no chance for yards after catch!

Why can't we run something over the middle, maybe a few crossing routes?

I’m having an issue where my router is constantly kicking devices off the network. We switched to Metronet about a month ago and have an Eero Router with one extender. The Echo devices get kicked off constantly to the point they’re almost useless because I have to put them in setup mode and get in the app to connect again. My phone will randomly go back to LTE instead of Wi-Fi and I have to toggle on and off again.

We purchased a high enough package that we aren’t limited to devices (we have around 15-20 with the kids ****, ring, nest, TVs, etc.) I’ve also never been able to hit more than like 250 down on 1 gig service in the same room as the router. These are my speed tests since we switched.

I really hope this is the last year of the Ferentz regime.

The Offense (Positives, Negatives, and what I'm neutral on)
- Positive: Abu Sama has some real potential. Only had 25 yards as Norton got the lion's share of carries. But anyone who knows football can see that this guy has some ability. Ability with burst, and make you miss. He reminds me of Alexander Robinson, good back we had in the Rhoads years.
- Jayden Higgins is a dawg, 95 yards and 1 TD. We should have gone to him more downfield today. He has high end ability.
- Ben Brahmer, this guy catches everything. In two games he is already better than Easton Dean. He's going to be special.
- Negatives: Jaylin Noel. I am sorry, I can't accept that this guy is our #2 receiver moving forward. Against UNI he had 4 receptions for 6 yards (not a typo). Today he has 3 drops, and he had 8 catches for a 6 yard average. He tends to NOT break any tackles, or take a small catch for a YAC gain. I'd frankly rather see more throws go to Jayden Higgins, Ben Brahmer, Aidan Bitter, or even Dimitri Stanley (he can burn people deep). He stayed in the game after all these drops which I can only shake my head at.
- Negatives: The lack of downfield throwing. Why not test Iowa's other corner (opposite Dejean) down the field more often? Again, keeping everything tight play's right into Iowa's hands. Daniel Jackson had a nice 13 yard catch, Higgins had a couple past 10 yards. Don't know why we didn't stress them more.
- Negative: I love Cartevious Norton as the hammer back and the short yardage back. But he has no business running out routes, he doesn't have the speed or bend to do this. IF we are going to complement a RB in the pass game, make that Abu Sama please.
- Neutral: O Line. We did have 90 yards rushing against what will be the toughest D we will face this year. I think this O line will get better as the year goes along. But they are in "prove it" mode for sure. For me it is too early to condemn them as similar to last year. I'm actually excited to see them in league play.
- Neutral: Scheelhaase. The UNI game is always strange, and Iowa is always very talented. Let's see how he does against Ohio and the Big 12. There were too many out rout passes today. I'll also say, we HAVE TO make defenses account for Rocco as a runner more. We cannot treat him like a glass doll, he has to run for some yards 4-5 times a game. That cost us the 4th down today obviously. Hopefully that is coached back into him moving forward.

Defense
- What can you say? The rest of the staff should be treating Heacock to steak dinners every month. Many games would be out of hand if not for the brillian play of our defense.
- Beau Freyler today looked like a high level NFL strong safety. Tackles well, big size, and makes key hits.
- Jeremiah Cooper is "Honey Badger Light". Man what a hell of a player.
- Cade McNamara was a little too comfy at times. We had some blitzes that narrowly missed. That's football I guess.

Misc.
- I think we as a fanbase can somewhat worry less and less about ND and Ohio State poaching our coach. Why? Look at his record in the Iowa rivalry and in close games the last 3 years.
- The biggest thing I want to see from now until the end of the season is offensive improvement. We need to be more creative on offense, mix in varying tempo's, and just keep defenses honest more. I think this includes more sprinkled in QB zone read runs, down field tosses, different plays in the run game. The shotgun handoff up the middle is a staple, and we have to deviate off of it when it's not working.

Why was the flag picked up when Ferentz called their 3rd time out in the 2nd quarter when they had 12 men in the huddle?

Saw Georges at the Cy-Hawk game today, got a discussion among our group about most popular Cyclone basketball player AFTER Fred Hoiberg. Niang was a an almost unanimous choice.
-4 year player
-successful tams while he was here
- related well to the community then and now.
Ejim and Morris were others mentioned but we agreed Georges was it.
Thoughts?

I know there are plenty of other things to talk about, however. Anyone else notice the students stopped partaking in cowbell with the band?? Sat there confused as the whole student section sat on their hands while it was played.

Moving the students away from the band has really negatively impacted the energy in the stadium.

My story from today's game. I hope you guys enjoy it.

Rocco Becht showed poise and Matt Campbell built trust in his young quarterback during Saturday's Cy-Hawk game.

Iowa State's late rally in Saturday's Cy-Hawk loss was overshadowed by early mistakes.

@RobWGray has more from JTS.

Discuss

Having surgery and need to sell my RV Pass for the following games. DM me for details.
TCU
Kansas
Texas