Iowa State football: Cy-Hawk rivalry 6th-best non-conference game

Athlon Sports ranks the Cy-Hawk series between Iowa State and Iowa as the sixth-best matchup as far as Big 12 non-conference tilts go.

Here’s what Athlon said about the annual in-state matchup.

"This is a passionate in-state rivalry that has been played 61 times (Iowa leads 41-20). The Hawkeyes won easily in Ames a year ago but lost 9-6 the last time these two met in Iowa City (2012). This game has seen high-scoring overtime affairs (44-41 in 2011) and low-scoring defensive battles. Fans never really know what they are going to see when these two get together."

Texas dominates the list with their matchup against UCLA at Jerryworld being the best non-conference matchup. Auburn at Kansas State is second, Florida State vs Oklahoma State in Jerryworld is fourth, and Tennessee at Oklahoma is fifth.

The other meetings that round out the list is Minnesota at TCU, TCU at SMU, West Virginia vs Alabama in Atlanta, Georgia, and Kansas at Duke (really?)

In basketball, absolutely, but I’d argue that Iowa State’s game against North Dakota State belongs above that Kansas-Duke matchup. Actually, just about everybody else’s games belong above anything the Jayhawks have on their slate. I just simply don’t expect them to be competitive against a weak ACC program that’s starting to trend the right way in recent years.

The Big 12 will hope to have a little more success in non-conference play this season. Outside of Oklahoma’s big win over Notre Dame (and even they weren’t incredibly impressive last year), they arguably could have been one of the worst power conferences collectively heading into October.