Iowa State football: Why the Cyclones won’t go winless in Big 12
By Brian Spaen
ESPN gives us their Iowa State football prediction, and they believe they’ll go winless. Here’s why that won’t happen.
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Over the weekend, we pointed out that ESPN’s Big 12 blog went through the entire season predicting every football game involving conference teams and came to the conclusion that Cyclones football would go winless in the conference, only racking up wins against North Dakota State and Toledo.
Ironically, looking at how they predicted games, you could see the whole season happening like that. Final go-ahead drives and losing games by three or four points. But all of that crap happening in one season is unrealistic. Iowa State will likely have a few games that they’ll lose in heartbreaking fashion, but not five of them.
Also, the chances of playing nine games in conference action and missing on all of them is next to impossible to accomplish. The only time that happened in Iowa State’s history in the Big 12 since 1996 was in 2003 when the team beat Northern Iowa, Ohio, and then lost all 10 remaining games on the slate.
That season was so terrible they got shut out in three consecutive games. Somehow the anemic offense and three rotating quarterbacks got worse as the year progressed.
Don’t give ESPN or the bloggers too much crap. Multiple writers were on this task of predictions, and while they’re fun to do and it sparks conversation, it’s not necessarily the most important thing on the agenda. I’m sure the each writer posted Iowa State’s record and thought to themselves, well, I doubt they’ll go winless for that long, but I’m not going to go back and change my prediction.
Had one person been on the task there would have been consistency. That’s why you should check out our too early game previews instead.