Cyclone State: Iowa State Won the Mental Game

For what it’s worth: We originally announced this column or newsletter or whatever we want to call it back in the spring. Week after week, it got deprioritized. Thank you to the Cyclones for prioritizing it.

I say that because this wasn’t originally intended to be a fair-weather series of blog posts. In fact, the idea behind the name was that we could talk about how to make Iowa a Cyclone State. But, here we are. It’s a Cyclone State, if the Cyclones can keep it. Since we’re launching today, we should concede: There’s clearly a fair-weather element to what we’re doing with this. The Cyclones made the weather fair.

Iowa State 20, Iowa 19

There was plenty about Saturday’s game that was impressive, with Kyle Konrardy’s decisive kick the obvious first entry upon the list. Domonique Orange was a wrecking ball inside the five-yard-line, successfully convincing Iowa to try throwing the ball on both field goal possessions. Darien Porter came up with the interception that started the comeback. Jaylin Noel outran Iowa, out-cut Iowa, and out-caught Iowa throughout the second half. But the overarching theme of the victory, the thing that defined the 2024 Cy-Hawk Game, was Iowa State’s resilience.

Before the Cyclones had run six offensive plays, Jarrod Hufford flinched on the snap twice. Before the Cyclones had gained a first down, Rocco Becht threw an interception inside his own red zone. Before the Cyclones had put a point onto the scoreboard, Konrardy grazed the upright with a halftime field goal. Becht and Hufford looked particularly rattled, their composure in the tank for the first 28 minutes of this blessed, cursed, season-defining Week 2 rivalry game. Somehow, they rallied. Becht and Hufford figure out the snap. Becht carved up the Hawkeye secondary from the Porter pick onwards. Konrardy was unfazed by his miss, and perhaps mercifully unaware of how close his team came to a delay of game on his game-winning kick. Iowa helped—McNamara did not offer Hawkeye fans a pleasant surprise, the downside of Kirk Ferentz’s stable ways demonstrating itself loudly to the assembled congregation—but Iowa State went out there and took it.

This is what Iowa State has to do. Iowa State has to win mental games. Iowa State can’t out-talent Iowa right now. Iowa State can’t out-talent most of the Big 12. Things have been better lately, but this is still a development program, not one that can recruit the athletes they get in even Iowa City, which isn’t exactly filled with large men running a 4.5-second 40-yard-dash. JJ Kohl is the only composite 4-star on the ISU roster, and he doesn’t even play. Everybody else came out of high school or junior college a 3-star or worse. Some of this is identifying the right prospects, the guys who can be developed, and a lot is the development itself, the process of developing the players who will become the roughly two NFL draft picks per year the program currently produces. But a lot of Iowa State winning comes down to being the stronger mental team. That’s what happened Saturday. It’s a recipe that can only get a program so far. But it’s a recipe that can take a team effectively lacking a single 4-star athlete and make that team one of the 20 or 30 or 40 best in the country. That’s a pretty good start.

What Comes Next

The victory’s significant within the in-state power struggle against Iowa. It hurts the Hawkeyes as much as it helps the Cyclones, inflaming Hawkeye fears of a bowl-less season for the first time since 2012. This has benefits beyond schadenfreude. More immediately, though, the win enlivens Iowa State’s playoff dream.

This team has playoff paths beyond winning the Big 12. That’s especially true after Saturday’s win. Our model only has ISU about five percent likely to win the conference title, but it has the team close to ten percent likely to make the College Football Playoff. Right now, bracketologies are showing only one Big 12 team, but that’s mostly because the SEC and Big Ten haven’t had a chance to cannibalize themselves yet. A one-bid league is very possible, but at the moment, the Big 12 is slightly likelier than not to put multiple teams in the field. In our latest 10,000 simulations, here’s how often the league shows up:

How does that happen? The same way it does for the Big Ten and SEC: The Big 12 produces two or more teams with very few losses. For good reasons, an 11–2 Big 12 team will likely end up ranked behind an 11–2 SEC team. Even so, an 11–2 Big 12 team will still very much be in the playoff conversation. Not a lot of teams win eleven games. Unless the College Football Playoff committee gets really aggressive in the deduction it gives Big 12 and ACC teams, something we doubt given the mostly static nature of the committee’s approach, the Big 12 will still be treated roughly as it’s always been treated. It’s not conference championship or bust in the Big 12. A conference championship does help, though.

Our model’s showing Iowa State with a 9.67% playoff probability. In 967 of those latest 10,000 simulations, the Cyclones make the playoff. Of those 967, Iowa State gets in as the Big 12 champion 509 times. That leaves 458 simulations—4.58% of our readouts—in which Iowa State reaches the playoff as an at-large. It’s possible, and it’s possible almost entirely thanks to beating a power conference team on the road.

(The opposite scenario—a conference championship without a playoff berth—is much less likely. It happened this week in only 0.23% of our sim’s.)

So, there are two goals, not one. There’s the goal to make the playoff and the goal to win the Big 12. One is almost twice as attainable as the other.

As far as winning the Big 12 goes…

Movelor, our model’s rating system, has the Cyclones the seventh-best team in the Big 12. That doesn’t sound great, but take heart: Two of the teams ahead of ISU are within a point and a half on a neutral field, and even Kansas State, whom Movelor currently pegs the Big 12 favorite, is only a 7.8-point neutral-site favorite over ISU. At the moment, Movelor only has ISU an underdog in four more games, and never quite by double digits.

ESPN’s SP+ sees a similar situation: Iowa State’s its sixth-best Big 12 team, Iowa State’s only an underdog in four more games, and the biggest spread Iowa State faces is an 11.3-point mark on the road against Utah. ESPN’s FPI isn’t as sure—it ranks ISU tenth in the league—but even it gives Campbell’s team a 3.1% shot at a conference title, not extraordinarily far from our model’s 5.3%.

More numbers:

What this table is telling us is what Iowa State must do to get into the playoff conversation. This doesn’t consider the Big 12 Championship itself, but it gets us close: If Iowa State gets through the Kansas State game at 11–1, they’ll most likely make the playoff field. If they enter the Big 12 Championship 12–0, they’re almost a lock. At 9–3 or 10–2, they’ll likely have to win the Big 12 title. The median expected season, an 8–4 campaign, won’t be enough, but we shouldn’t be surprised by that. The bottom line is that Iowa State has a chance, and while the Big 12 Championship is the simplest angle and should be the focus, that chance is probably a little broader than a lot of people realize.

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We’re aiming to make this a biweekly post, but with Cyclone football idle on Saturday, we might get deprioritized again later this week. If we make the time, we’ll be back on Thursday or Friday to talk a little volleyball. If not, we’ll see you next week ahead of Arkansas State.