AMES, Iowa — Don’t get Jamie Pollard started. Iowa State’s veteran athletic director is damn proud that his football program is one of only 11 undefeated FBS teams at the halfway point of the 2024 season.
So much so that Cyclone football isn’t just on a heater, Pollard believes Iowa State is setting an example.
“I think college football needs an Iowa State right now,” Pollard said, “because we’re exhibit A about opportunity and the chance to play your way in.”
Today’s magic of the College Football Playoff aside, Pollard also sees a future in which the dream Iowa State harbors gets more distant each day.
“If we’re just going to let two conferences play a regular season and we’ll guarantee their best teams the top spot, then the regular season is going to be pretty boring,” Pollard said.
He is speaking, of course, about the SEC and Big Ten, the de facto rulers of the game. News seems to break almost daily about the two power conferences eventually overrunning the entire sport. So before he starts bragging on this year’s Cyclones, Pollard, now in his 20th year here, has related topics to discuss.
“My take would be what collateral damage is it going to take until somebody says, ‘Why are we letting these few people do this to our industry?'” Pollard said. “Until that gets fixed, we’re going to see that those with the gold try to take all the gold.”
Pollard is speaking not only of the Power Two, but of the end of the Pac-12. He is speaking of a separation anxiety everyone else has towards the Big Ten and SEC. He is speaking of a day when conferences start turning on themselves.
Pollard says there will be a day when the likes of Alabama wake up and ask, ‘Why is Vanderbilt making the same money we are?'”
And then even the Commodores — SEC members for 92 years and toast of the country lately — will fear for their existence.
These are real world possibilities, just not here at the moment.
For now, life is too good at one of college football’s most underrated programs. It gets cold here, so what? The surrounding landscape features — not much of anything. So what?
The wonder of it is the College Football Playoff has met historically mediocre programs like Iowa State in the middle. Look around. Success is more accessible for fellow undefeateds such as Pittsburgh, BYU, Army and Navy.
Iowa State just happens to be a centerpiece of those halfway surprises. This week, the curtain has been pulled aside here to reveal a bit of wholesomeness in the everyday grind of what Pollard calls an eventual “whittling down” of FBS programs.
“Hello, folks. It’s happened,” Pollard said. “Don’t say that it’s not.”
If that day ever comes, then, it will make this week all the more memorable. That list of 11 undefeateds contains some of the usual suspects: Texas, Miami, Oregon, Penn State. Ah, but Iowa State serves as an attractive off-Broadway production halfway through the season.
Indiana, Pittsburgh, Army and Navy are also in the undefeated club of understudies. Iowa State might as well be the star. The Cyclones’ last conference title was in 1912, when the Ames Intelligencer published a poultry column on page 2, and they are 6-0 for the first time since 1938. In the middle of The Depression, when a gas range sold for $43, coach Jim Yeager predicted his starting 11 that season (players went both ways back then) might average 190 pounds.
The modern Cyclones are a collection of players who came here proud to be underrated, undervalued and largely under the radar:
- Right tackle Tyler Miller arrived as a 6-foot-6, 230-pound prospect. Today he is a 6-foot-9, 330-pound All-Big 12 candidate.
- Receiver Jayden Higgins has caught the most passes in the country (39) without a drop, according to Pro Football Focus.
- Quarterback Rocco Becht came from Tampa, Florida, after offer being overlooked by West Virginia, where his dad Anthony was inducted into the program’s hall of fame last Saturday.
- Coach Matt Campbell has had to play 11 linebackers because of injuries. The current starters are redshirt freshman walk-on Rylan Barnes, sophomore Kooper Ebel and true freshman Beau Goodwin. All played at Class A Iowa high schools (the smallest division). The combined populations of their three hometowns is 8,500, according to the Des Moines Register.
“You feel sometimes like it’s ‘Apollo 13,'” defensive coordinator Jon Heacock said of the injuries. “You remember how they dumped that box of parts out and said [‘fix it’]? You just grinding. You just keep going.”
Teams like Iowa State are usually stripped for parts long before they get to this point. If $20 million buys success at places like Ohio State and Oregon, the Cyclones are largely getting by on loyalty and playing time.
“I’ve always wanted to stay here no matter who offers me [NIL money],” Becht said. “My parents said, ‘If you commit to a [school] you’re going to stay at that [school]. You’re going to be loyal to them. “
That type of quote is as rare these days as some of the succulent BBQ at Hickory Park. That makes this story almost too sugary sweet. Campbell is the one-time hottest coach in the country who is starting to look like a lifer here. His program is built on what is almost a football cliché: culture. Except that Iowa State might be the best developmental program in the country since Kansas State’s Bill Snyder stepped down six years ago.
No, the record hasn’t always shown it, but the fans, their coach and their players have clung to the belief that something like this day would come. What happens from here is another discussion, but gosh it feels good to be a Cyclone in the nation’s No. 68 TV market.
You watching?
“We’ve been the most desperate team out there,” Becht said. “We remember our history.”
That history includes that last conference title in the old Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. That history includes an 84-year gap between 6-0 starts. Iowa State has never won double-digit games in its 128-year history.
That history also includes a gambling scandal last year that led to the suspension of seven seniors. No staffers were charged with any wrongdoing. The Cyclones rebounded from the distraction to go 7-6 following a 4-8 last-place finish in the Big 12 in 2022.
“As someone wrote last year, ‘Iowa State’s five-star culture is on the brink,’ Campbell said. “I chuckled at it because your culture is defined when you’re at your worst.”
Those Cyclones rebounded from a Week 3 loss at Ohio by beating Oklahoma State. The remaining seniors and a key group of juniors “guided the locker room through some really tumultuous waters,” last season, Campbell added.
USATSI
Developmental doesn’t even begin to describe how Campbell and his staff got here.
“We haven’t had to sell our souls …,” Campbell said. “We’ve just been able to build culture.”
Campbell is asked what he hears from his peers about NIL horror stories, but true to the man himself, he hasn’t paid attention. While other coaches complain about players and parents coming with their hands out, that simply doesn’t happen here.
Campbell says the “lead conversation” with every player on the roster has not ever started with NIL.
“There’s no other way [to succeed] here,” Campbell said. “Our value system hasn’t changed at all, even as the world around has changed. I still think there are 18- to 22-year-olds and their parents that are looking for the opportunity.”
This year’s recruiting class was ranked ninth in the Big 12 and 53rd overall, according to 247Sports. The players from those rankings have proven to be more reliable than the rankings themselves.
“They’re all kind of the same kinds of kids,” Heacock said. “That’s the staff’s job of recruiting of what coach wants — recruit kids that have a story, recruit kids that have scars, recruit kids that not everybody loved.
“Team, culture, play for each other. It still matters.”
Heacock, a 40-year vet in the industry, has been one of the leading purveyors of the 3-3-5 “stack” defense. The change was made out of necessity after a 2-4 start in 2017. Now, schools beat a path to the 64-year-old’s door in the offseason.
The Big 12’s best defense is on track to give up its fewest yards since at least 2015. UCF, Iowa State’s next opponent, leads the Big 12 in yards and is a near two-touchdown underdog, according to FanDuel Sportsbook.
Heacock knows how hard it is to get to this point. He won a national championship as an assistant at FCS Youngstown State, but when Campbell brought him here from Toledo in 2016, Heacock had been an assistant at two Power Five programs (Indiana and Purdue) for four years, going a combined 11-34.
Now the Cyclones have his stamp, too. Iowa State is especially good at turnovers, which lead to field position and hidden points. Since 2023, the defense has 26 interceptions, second only to UNLV (30) during that span. This season, the differential on points scored after turnovers is 55-3. Iowa State is tied for fourth in turnover margin and is one of four teams not to lose a fumble this season.
In fact, the Cyclones have lost only three fumbles in the last 1,155 snaps.
“With NIL and stuff, everyone is just trying to get theirs …,” defensive back Beau Freyler said. “Coach Campbell recruits them and says, ‘If you come here, you’re called to be here.’ This is not a place where you’re going to get the glitz and the glamor.”
Not when November’s chilling winds come sweeping down the Great Plains. Try to envision Florida State playing here in another round of realignment. Its fans would riot in the streets. But the road to the Big 12 Championship Game, for now, goes through the wonderful combination of Iowa State, BYU and Texas Tech, all tied atop the league at 3-0. The Cyclones only have one true road game left (Nov. 23 at Utah).
Culture sounds cliché, but it means something when Campbell is in ninth year. Women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly is entering his 30th year. Volleyball coach Christy Johnson-Lynch has been around two decades. Basketball coach T.J. Otzelberger has been here 17 years counting his time as assistant coach.
That’s time enough to develop a certain day-to-day routine. Iowa State never gets too up or down, unless its fans are invading Kansas City each year for the Big 12 basketball tournament. The economic impact can felt throughout downtown’s establishments.
Even the Cyclones’ followers overachieve, it seems.
USATSI
The stadium is named after Jack Trice, the first African-American to play football at Iowa State. Some of the famous last words he wrote grace the athletic facilities here.
“I will.”
Trice died in 1923 of injuries sustained in a game against Minnesota. Iowa State continues to honor his legacy and ethic.
Iowa State’s primary collective happens to be called, “We Will.” But by all accounts it is not hustling up $20 million to build a roster. Not even close.
“[The coaching staff] found student-athletes under the radar screen that are talented enough to play at this level when nobody knew they were talented enough,” Pollard said, “except the coaches who recruited them. What coach [Campbell] is proving is that teams can’t be bought. They’ve got to be developed.”
That development includes a new budget. When it comes to fully funding revenue sharing in the future, Pollard reminds that few schools beyond the SEC and Big Ten will be able to afford $22 million a year for 10 years.
“I don’t think everyone in the Big 12 can fund revenue sharing,” he said. “I’m not convinced both conferences [Big Ten, SEC] can just do it. We’re built for the rough side of the mountain at Iowa State.”
That plan includes CYTown, a residential/entertainment district due to open Fall 2025. That is a potential game changer if that whittling down ever comes. Iowa State has essentially written its love letter to major college football in steel, brick and mortar.
It also means zero state subsidies. While that might suggest a disadvantage in propping up the athletic department, Iowa State is lean, mean and beholden to no one outside. Pollard has Iowa State’s athletic department positioned as No. 4 in Big 12 revenue (39th in the country) ahead of the likes of Maryland, UCLA and Colorado.
“I just know it’s going to be a heavy, heavy lift,” Pollard said of the future.
But imagine: if Campbell can succeed at a developmental program like Iowa State, what could he do at a place with resources?
We might not ever find out. Campbell has spent nine years becoming the program’s winningest coach. He surpassed Dan McCarney’s modest total of 56 last month. Along the way, Iowa State has become one of the teams you’d least like to play.
For the former Toledo coach from Massillon, Ohio, this place has long since felt like home. The Cyclones come at you in waves of depth chart force. This is a program that has produced NFL stars Brock Purdy, DE Will McDonald IV, RB Breece Hall and TE Charlie Kolar, all since the 2022 draft.
It doesn’t get any more Iowa State than Purdy emerging from being Mr. Irrelevant to playing in the Super Bowl.
Iowa State crossed another threshold as the only school currently appearing in the AP top 10 for football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball. Only Iowa State and Alabama have football and men’s basketball teams in the top 10.
“We’re a small-market team that has found a way to be efficient,” Pollard said.
He could see these days coming. Texas and Oklahoma were leaving the Big 12, creating a vacuum for what amounts to an all comers meet in the new 16-team league. Someone has to win the Big 12 (odds here via FanDuel) and most likely that will be a team like Iowa State, one with no modern championship pedigree (though the Cyclones did play for the Big 12 title once, losing to Oklahoma in 2020).
But there’s no denying it’s working in Ames. This week marks the third time Iowa State has been ranked in the top 10 since 2020, and fourth overall.
“We’re not for everybody. But those that have chosen to stay here,” Pollard said, “we clearly are something for them.”