Normally, I feel about college sports what I feel about Bartlett pears; if it’s the right season, maybe, but otherwise, I walk on by.
My interest (in NCAA sports, not in pears) has been piqued of late. Like a bored ‘50s housewife given sudden and unexpected access to a television, I can’t stop watching the process of conference realignment. Or, more specifically, the panic, rumor-mongering, and selective amnesia displayed by those participating in that realignment as those people forget why conferences exist in the first place: to pit teams against one another because those teams’ fans care about the games.
I grew up in a small town in Kansas, where a college sports fan’s loyalty was painted by one of two brushes: you could be a Kansas fan, or you could be a Kansas State fan. The options were as distinct as the colors that represented the two schools; red and blue for one, purple and white for the other.
The Kansas/Kansas State rivalry is an intense one. But as it turned out, I knew nothing of intense rivalries. Until I got to Iowa, that is, and enrolled at Iowa State University.
In Kansas, as in most places, college sports fandom is tempered by whichever professional teams are nearby. I liked the Kansas Jayhawks a lot, but I liked the Kansas City Royals more. (This will date me but in my childhood, the Kansas City Royals were a professional baseba…wait, they still are?)
There are no such professional distractions in Iowa. When I arrived in Ames for college, my new Iowa-bred friends lamented their plight but – as Iowans are prone to doing – put a brave face on it. “We get to pick,” they said. And pick they did. Some people became Vikings/Twins fans, some Bears/Cubs fans, some Chiefs/Royals fans. Some outliers picked the Packers. One of my roommates was a Yankees and Redskins fan, a fact that drove me almost as insane as his superiority in the engineering classes we took together.
These relatively far-flung professional sports teams served only as mild background noise to the important stuff: the neverending battle between the University of Iowa and Iowa State, a rivalry that, truth be told, is a shockingly good-natured one. I have heard no stories of poisoned trees in Iowa City or kidnapped mascots in Ames. (Though it would be difficult to kidnap a tornado.)
The general respectfulness of the Iowa/Iowa State rivalry should be traced more to the kindness of the average Iowan than to any shortage of acrimony between fans of the two schools. The University of Iowa is seen by Iowa Staters as the pretentious, bourgeois institution that might as well be in Chicago. Iowa State, by Iowa fans, as a farmer-stocked backwater somewhere near Montana.
Iowa and Iowa State are not in the same conference. Nonetheless, the mostly-kindhearted enmity between the two schools illustrated to me how important rivalries are to the fans who embrace them. And further, how college sports would be a shell of itself without those rivalries.
I noticed that Iowa State had other “enemies”: Nebraska football. Kansas basketball. Any other school in the Big XII that was also under the mistaken impression that Iowa State is a farmer-stocked backwater somewhere near Montana. These rivalries were not the overnight creation of a realignment czar. They had developed slowly, over almost a century. The Big Eight, the conference that preceded the Big XII, was formed (as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association) in 1907. Iowa State joined in 1908, and by 1927, six of the eight final members were in place, with only Colorado (1948) and Oklahoma State (1958) to come.
A long time, then, for Iowa State to develop its identity as perennial underdog.
In the current conference shakeup, in which our (Midwesterners’) Big XII conference faces bombardment from the SEC, the Big Ten, and the Pac-1,116, it becomes easy to overlook underdogs like Iowa State (or Kansas State, or Baylor, or Texas Tech). Schools like Texas, with their short memories and big budgets, forget that they need these underdogs almost as much as they need their superior players and well-compensated coaches.
The underdogs have fans, too. And, paradoxically, those fans are their fans.
Iowa State fans are also Texas fans. Not because Iowa State fans cheer for Texas, but because Iowa State fans are watching Texas games. Sure, those fans are watching to cheer against Texas, but they’re still watching.
Regional interest then becomes national interest. People in New York or Los Angeles or Seattle don’t care about Texas football because of Texas wins against Akron and South Florida. They care because of wins against Texas A&M (ungrateful wretches that they are) and, yes, Iowa State. Not because someone in New York or Los Angeles or Seattle cares, immediately, about Texas vs. Iowa State, but because a whole bunch of sports-starved, well-meaning people in Iowa care about Texas vs. Iowa State. There are a lot of these people, and when they care about something, then someone in New York or Los Angeles or Seattle cares about Texas vs. Iowa State. Those big-city folk (as someone from the Midwest might say) only care because someone else cares. Iowa State vs. Texas, or Iowa State vs. Nebraska, or Iowa State vs. Kansas: these rivalries are interesting to everyone (and lucrative for the involved schools) because of a devoted few.
Take away those natural, slow-developing rivalries – because someone thinks Iowa State isn’t generating enough revenue or because Texas or Nebraska or Oklahoma thinks it will forever remain atop the college football mountain – and the interest in the football played by the most powerful schools begins to erode. Distill college sports to the point that it becomes a matchup of only the thirty-two biggest and best college football programs and you run the risk of alienating Iowa State fans who, it turns out, are far more numerous, far more passionate, and far more important than anyone seems to recall.
Conference realignment is a delicate and unpredictable process, a little like pulling on Silly Putty. Go slowly enough, like the Big Eight/Big XII did from 1907 to 1996, and you can turn your Silly Putty into an inedible Fruit Roll-up. But go too quickly and you can turn your Silly Putty into two Silly Putties.
It’s possible that the conferences are going slowly enough – that they are treating the Silly Putty that is the loyalty, tradition, and history inherent to conference rivalries like an experienced twelve-year old. But most signs point to them acting like five-year-olds: anxious, impatient, and forgetful that the good people of Ames, Iowa are who made college sports what it is today: an exploitative player factory that screws over its players while training them for the pros. : a hugely successful endeavor that entertains millions of people, including some very fine people in Iowa – people who are far more important to the prospects of major college athletics than is realized by anyone discussing the formation of rivalry-free, watered-down, fan-killing, fun-killing – and, ultimately, profit-killing – superconferences.
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Very nice article Paul. With all your sarcasm, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read your angle on ISU in realignment, but very well done, and you represented ISU well.
Great job Paul. You said what many Iowa Staters have been saying all along. In reality, Iowa State should be in the Big 10, but they think of Iowa State as small time.
Iowa State continually is a school with huge fan support. Fans pack Hilton colis, for not only men’s basketball, but for wrestling and women’s basketball and volleyball. Football interest s at an all-time high.
There isn’t a more loyal and appreciative fan base in the country.
Now if we can just get you to make a comeback on the hardwood.
Well done.
Yah, that’s a pretty nice article Paul. You summed up the words of a lot of us Mid-Westerners. I’ve always loved your writings and glad I found you again. Keep up the good work. Go State! -B
Thanks so much Paul. Now come to a game and get the standing-o you deserve.
Will Hank William jr become a contributor here? You guys have one gigantic thing in common. Getting shitcanned by espn for saying jackassed things and then butchering the first amendment as a “defense”.
Only room for one Hank on this here website, Prags.