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For five years, Iowa State and its fans have marked down the second Saturday of September as the only game on the schedule that matters. However, Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard just announced a major shake up for the Cyclones’ annual Super Bowl.
“After months of internal talks, surveying our fans, and countless nights trying to find myself in the woods, we feel it is in the best interest of Iowa State University to change our Super Bowl to the first Saturday of September against the University of Northern Iowa Panthers.”
“While the decision wasn’t easy, it would’ve been a failure on my end if I were to ignore the obvious reasons as to why Northern Iowa serves as a better Super Bowl opponent than Iowa,” Pollard continued.
“The first thing we looked at is the fan bases. We believe that Northern Iowa better exemplifies the qualities of a good fan base and that it is best to disassociate ourselves from the University of Iowa as much as possible. Panther fans don’t steal from their own team’s locker room. Panther fans don’t blow .341 BAC’s and brag about it. Panther fans don’t let famous dropouts ruin great TV shows such as Two and a Half Men.”
“We also looked at our fan base and asked ourselves ‘what do our fans want more?’ While UNI and Iowa have both sold out Jack Trice twice before, it is Northern Iowa that our fans get most excited about. Our 3OT victory against Iowa in 2011 had 500 less fans than our 2007 loss to UNI. UNI fills the seats. Iowa doesn’t.”
“But we would be naive to just look at the fan bases to make a decision as big as this one,” Pollard said. “We also looked at quality of opponents. While Iowa has a history of success in the NFL Draft, the players they produce, simply put, are not NFL quality players. First round pick Adrian Clayborn has turned out to be a flop. Riley Reiff plays for the worst offensive line in football. It’s one thing to produce a bunch of guys that make a decent practice squad in the NFL. It’s another to produce a Kelechi Osemele-esque talent. We’re seeing that in Northern Iowa’s David Johnson. By today’s standards, if you want to be an NFL star, Iowa is the third in-state school you should look at attending.”
“When the idea of changing our Super Bowl was first proposed, I thought it was crazy. However, after hearing Chris Hassel chanting “Rose Bowl” on SportsCenter after ISU defeated Iowa last December in basketball, I realized that the Super Bowl is more than just football -- it’s basketball as well. We reviewed our records and noticed that, combining our record against Iowa in basketball and football since the Super Bowl started in 2011, the Cyclones own a 7-3 record over the Hawks in the two sports. In that same time period with the same two sports, we are just 3-3 against Northern Iowa. Obviously our attention needs to be focused towards more talented, higher quality, better coached teams.”
“Finally, it came to a point in time where we felt if we continued to make Iowa our Super Bowl, they would take their ball and go home, just like they did in 1934 when we curb stomped them 31-6 and they refused to play us again for 43 years.”
After Pollard concluded his presser, the news quickly spread around the state. We ventured out to get some quotes from some of the affected residents.
“Ridiculous,” an anonymous Black Heart Gold Pants staff writer told WRNL. “For the last five years, we’ve always had the fall back option of accusing Iowa State of wanting it more if they beat us. Now what excuse can we come up with if they beat us?”
But not all Hawk fans are sad to see the Super Bowl end.
“I just got off the phone with Jamie thanking him,” University of Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta told WRNL in an exclusive interview. “I’m trying to finalize a lifetime contract with Kirk Ferentz. We could go 11-1 and our fan base would be questioning me on keeping Kirk on staff if Iowa State happened to be that 1 loss. However, going 8-5 was acceptable in 2013 against one of the weakest schedules in all of football just because we beat the Cyclones. Iowa fans are pretty delusional sometimes and I’m sure they will be sad to hear Iowa State is removing us as their Super Bowl, but when it’s all said and done, this move was best for both parties. Especially me.”