AMES, Iowa — Iowa State football players get a short history lesson almost every day from Matt Campbell.
Very short.
“133 years!” the coach might say or shout at practice or during a meeting.
ISU has played 133 seasons and is yet to win an outright conference championship, and Campbell’s message is meant to inspire rather than call to mind more than a century of mostly dismal football on the plains north of Des Moines.
“Why not us be the team to go do it now?” senior receiver Jaylin Noel said.
The Cyclones have won their first five games for the first time since 1980, and a win at West Virginia would make them 6-0 for the first time since 1938.
At No. 11 in The Associated Press Top 25, they have their highest ranking since they opened No. 7 in what turned out be a disappointing 7-6 season in 2021 following their first appearance in the Big 12 championship game.
Campbell calls Iowa State a development program, one where mostly three-star recruits require a year, two or even three to become major contributors.
Consider the Cyclones went 4-8 and won one Big 12 game in 2022 for the worst season since Campbell’s first team went 3-9 in 2016. Last year, they went to a bowl and finished 7-6 in a season in which five projected starters were suspended as a result of a state investigation into sports wagering among college athletes. Nine starters on offense and nine on defense from that team are on the team that’s unbeaten so far.
The Cyclones are winning with a versatile offense led by a steady second-year starter in quarterback Rocco Becht, explosive receivers in Noel and Jayden Higgins, and an improving running game. The defense leads the Big 12 in total yards, passing yards and points allowed despite a run of injuries to linebackers.
Campbell indicated his rallying cry about making history doesn’t conflict with the week-by-week mantra for which he’s famous. He said appreciation for every victory is tempered by the understanding a team isn’t truly judged until the end of the season.
“We’ve had moments where we’ve had success,” he said, “and how do you handle that, how do you sustain it?”
The Cyclones are on a favorable trajectory after a clunky opening win over North Dakota of the second-tier Football Championship Subdivision. Then came the CyHawk Game against Iowa, which the Cyclones won on walk-on Kyle Konrardy’s 54-yard field goal with six seconds left.
Convincing wins over Arkansas State and at Houston followed, and then they overcame two deficits to pull away from Baylor for a 43-21 victory.
With each week, there’s more belief.
“A lot of teams came through here, and I know coach Campbell has really changed the culture compared with what it’s been in the past,” tight end Benjamin Brahmer said.
Noel said it’s “cool” to be 5-0 for the first time in 44 years, but he has been around the program long enough to know a slice of humble pie could be served any week.
Iowa State is a 3-point favorite entering its game against West Virginia, which enjoys one of the better home-field advantages in the country, and then it hosts UCF and upstart Texas Tech. The schedule is backloaded with finishing games at No. 16 Utah and at home against No. 18 Kansas State.
“We know it’s not easy,” he said. “As long as it’s been, (more than) 40 years since it happened — it could be stripped right away from us ... Iowa State has never won nothing.”
Success, to be sure, has been fleeting over the program’s history. The only two conference championships were shared, and they came in 1911 and ‘12 in the Missouri Valley Conference. Those were the glory years. In the 79 years since the end of World War II, the Cyclones have had only 23 winning seasons, six of them under Campbell.
“We still haven’t won at least a major conference championship outright,” Campbell said. “The reality of it is it’s hard enough to do at Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State. Obviously, it’s been really hard to do here at Iowa State.”
