The Big 12 Eras Tour (Taylor's Version)
A Swift assessment of ISU's past relationships
Not all of Iowa State’s exes live in Texas. Just two of them.
Iowa State’s 2024 football schedule will be the first since 1907 (excluding the pandemic year of 1918) that doesn’t have either Missouri or Oklahoma on it. The graveyard section of Wikipedia’s page of longest college football rivalries is littered with series ended by colleges abandoning the Big 12 over the past 15 years. Next July, Oklahoma and Texas will add to that list as they leave for the Southeastern Conference.
The list of partners who have jilted Iowa State is so long that properly classifying them requires an assist from someone who’s written a song or two about breakups.
Taylor, take it away.
Nebraska: “Bad Blood”
Many institutions on this list had occasionally flirted with other conferences in the past. But in 2009, after Nebraska fell one second short of a conference football championship and the Big Ten announced days later it was looking to expand, Herbie Husker was ready to be seduced.
Nebraska had never been comfortable with surrendering the conference to Texas either in management or prowess. The Cornhuskers had problems, and the Big 12 couldn’t solve them.
The “Sea of Red” fanbase flooded Jack Trice Stadium for the last time Nov. 6, 2010. A 14-point Cyclone comeback sent the game into overtime, but a two-point conversion attempt failed. No. 9 Nebraska 31, Iowa State 30.
“Gooooo…Biiiiiigggg….Reehhhh-ehhhhdddd! GO BIG RED!” I heard someone yell as everyone headed for the exits.
“GO HOME!” multiple Cyclones shouted back.
Another Swift option here could have been “Red.” It’s a post-breakup song with a lot of lines about love, fitting for a love-hate relationship, as in, Iowa State fans love to hate Nebraska. (So do Iowa fans, as Robert John Ford so brilliantly depicts in his “Utopia” musical.)
Nebraska has had four football coaches in its Big Ten era and just finished a seventh consecutive losing season. The fans feel like they’ve been wandering in the wilderness long enough. But the wounds inflicted in 2010 last and last, and this Iowa State fan has only one thing to say:
Your punishment must be more severe.
Colorado: “Back to December”
Nebraska fans will be quick to say that when the Big 12 was on the edge of ruin in 2010, they didn’t jump first. It was those dastardly Colorado Buffaloes, leaving a whole day earlier.
“To be the first is always nice,” then-Colorado athletic director Mike Bohn said at a press conference June 11, 2010 announcing the move to the Pac-10-turned-Pac-12. “On the other hand, we didn’t do it to be the first. We did it because it was right.”
In 2020, Colorado athletic director Rick George told the Denver Post, “We feel really entrenched in the Pac-12,” unintentionally echoing a statement ISU football coach Gene Chizik made right before he bailed for Auburn.
That entrenchment changed this past summer due to, what else, television contracts (more accurately, the Pac-12’s lack of one). Colorado swallowed its pride and swore this time it will love the Big 12 right.
Would Colorado say it was sorry, though? I doubt it.
Besides, the last thing Deion Sanders will ever do is say he was sorry.
Texas A&M: “This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things”
An eleventh-hour deal saved the Big 12 in 2010 — and then 14 months later it was once again on the brink of collapse. For a short while, Texas A&M was shaking the Big 12’s hand, and then the Aggies prepared to stab the conference in the back.
Why? Two words: Longhorn Network.
In April 2011, ESPN and the University of Texas announced a 20-year deal to create a channel dedicated to the Longhorns. Four months later, Texas A&M announced it was leaving “to join another athletic conference,” which obviously would be the SEC. Last week, Texas Monthly went into a deep dive on the creation, and soon destruction, of the Longhorn Network.
Texas A&M wanted out of Texas’ shadow, even if that meant ditching an entire shared history. The Aggies just fired a coach who won nearly two-thirds of his games but turned out to be flawed for other reasons. It turns out there are some problems money can’t solve.
Texas A&M thought the SEC would be the ticket to the high life. But now its more glamorous, more successful sibling is moving in. The Aggies are about to find out who their real friends are, and it may not be pretty.
Missouri: “Picture to Burn”
Remember when geographic proximity was one of the components of a college conference? Those were the days. We were so naive back then.
Iowa State and Missouri, five hours apart, dialed up the loathing on the basketball court in the 1980s and early ’90s, when Johnny Orr and Norm Stewart coached against each other. In football, there was a century of history, although ISU didn’t hold a candle to Kansas when it came to who Mizzou truly hated.
One of the sparks that lit Missouri’s fire to get out of the Big 12 — and nearly burnt the conference down on its way out — was the 2009 Insight Bowl. A 6-6 Cyclones team was picked to participate over the 8-4 Tigers, and the latter felt snubbed. When A&M’s announced departure made the conference seem wobbly, Missouri was extremely interested in being anywhere else.
It feels fitting to assign a song from Swift’s country era to this Midwestern university that has been easy to overlook now that it’s in the SEC. Then again, with the direction country music took in the 2010s — i.e., to the Florida-Georgia Line — this might not be the burn I want it to be.
Now give us back the Telephone Trophy.
Oklahoma: “Mean”
In 2012, I reflected on Iowa State’s relationship with Oklahoma, much in the way that a cow pie might reflect upon its relationship with a cow. Of 89 games, the Sooners won 80 of them; ISU accounts for 8% of Oklahoma’s all-time wins.
With a few years of exceptions, Oklahoma always loomed large on the schedule. (The same goes for Nebraska.) The challenge was similar to JFK’s famous near-ad-lib, “Why does Rice play Texas?” The Cyclones could shoot for the moon — but too often ended up self-immolating on the launchpad or shot down shortly after liftoff. In the last decade, though, ISU managed to come up with one more win in Norman and the first (and last) at Jack Trice Stadium.
How long will it take for Sooners fans to spend most football Saturdays in a bar “ranting about the same old bitter things” and perhaps new bitter things like losing to South Carolina? Have they considered asking Nebraska fans what it’s like not being able to bend the college football universe to their will?
All Oklahoma’s ever gonna be is mean — and 8-4 in the SEC.
Texas: “Anti-Hero”
I mean, duh.
As much as I rag on the former Big Eight programs (and A&M) for grabbing parachutes and jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, there is one common thread. From disputes dating back to the conference’s founding that drove out Nebraska, to the Longhorn Network that drove out A&M, to blindsiding eight universities with the surprise SEC announcement, Texas’ insistence on being Texas has created conflict in the conference for a decade and a half.
“We don’t keep up with the Joneses, we are the Joneses,” former athletic director DeLoss Dodds once said.
You’re the problem, Texas. It’s you.
Horns down.
All of the above (except Colorado): “We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together”
Ideally, no 2009 Big 12 team still in the 2024 Big 12 would schedule any of those teams in football or basketball again. Kansas and Kansas State haven’t felt that way, as both set up football series with Missouri. ISU did a home-and-home with the Tigers in men’s basketball.
Oklahoma State did everything the right way Nov. 4. It took a series lopsided in favor of the departing opponent (Oklahoma), whanged that opponent over the head with a frying pan to claim eternal scoreboard, and played Swift’s 2012 song on the way out. Bravo.
This Saturday, in the Big 12 football championship game, Oklahoma State is the only thing that can stop Texas from grabbing another piece of Big 12 hardware in its farewell tour. (The Longhorns already won a seventh straight, and last, Big 12 volleyball title.)
Bonus: Kansas State: “Blank Space”
While the Big Ten is going to absurd lengths to preserve Iowa’s football rivalries, the new-look Big 12 is doing Iowa State no such favors. The 2027 football schedule does not include ISU’s now-most-played opponent, Kansas State. A series that spanned two pandemics will be interrupted.
This calls for an unorthodox measure: a “non-conference” game. Iowa State doesn’t need to play at Bowling Green that year. Kansas State has a blank space on the 2027 schedule, baby, and the Wildcats should write Cy’s name.
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