Nerves, Steele Drive Cyclones to Triple-OT Victory Over Iowa Hawkeyes!

By Mike Rickord

The front cover of this 13th annual Iowa-Iowa State cover of the Iowa Sports Connection features Steele Jantz as he willed Iowa State to victory at Stadium in an incredible triple-overtime victory over the Iowa Hawkeyes, handing the Iowa State Cyclones bragging rights and the Cy-Hawk trophy for a year. I consider this intrastate rivalry the contest that kicks off the unofficial start of the football season every year. This game is discussed all year round in all 99 counties as it is the crème de la crème of the football world in our great state each season and rightfully so. This 2011 battle featured youngsters on both sidelines that played high school football in the great state of Iowa. The families of these young men, regardless of whether they got in the game, are bursting with pride as all young Iowans when they start playing youth football and dream of pulling on the Hawk or Cyclone jersey and participating in the biggest game in the state. This motivation carries them on Friday nights as they put on the pads for their high schools. It’s a thrill for the folks back home watching on TV or in the stands to see their high school represented on this pivotal Saturday in Iowa sports folk lore for generations to come.

This game was incredible and lived up to the pageantry, partying, school pride, and year-round buzz make this game the flagship for the football season every year for sports fans across the state but this game will be discussed for generations. This back-and-forth drama was outstanding this year at Jack Trice. It is obvious that this annual contest has become an incredible spectacle in every pocket of the state as all Iowans in some capacity, regardless of school affiliation or interest in sports, are touched by the incredible reach of this event and a win for the Cyclones get the competitive juices really flowing again.

This year the game fell on Sept. 10, the day before the 10-year anniversary of Sept. 11 which made it even more memorable as each of us as Americans have been impacted since that devastating attack on September 11, 2001. I know as a proud American and Iowan that our state bonded together on that date and on the sports side of the history, which is very insignificant, I recall the Iowa-Iowa State game being moved to Thanksgiving week-end and it certainly did not have the same feel as it does the second game of the season every year. This annual festival of college football energizes the state and all of the high school and collegiate teams that lace em up on Fridays and Saturdays and we are blessed to have this annual intrastate rivalry to energize the state each fall and with this ISU win the level of competitiveness for the 2012 contest in Iowa City!

I love college football and in Iowa we have are very fortunate with the 2 D-I programs, UNI, the Iowa Conference with the D-III programs across the state, D-II Upper Iowa, and my favorite the NAIA schools that play from Sioux City to the Quad Cities. I am blessed to still have a son playing the great game of college football for the Morningside Mustangs a perennial power in NAIA fresh off a victory on Saturday the 10th over the other NAIA power Northwestern College in Orange City. I assure you the crowd was only 10,000 last week but the energy and passion was just as intense as the action in Ames just hours earlier as it is at all small college games.

The Iowa high school football season has reached week number five of the season for many teams as I type this column on September 15th. That is remarkable but it is the reality of the new playoff system and realignment of the schedules across all classes. I for one certainly feel that the season starts much too early, however, it’s kicked off and I absolutely love watching our award winning team cover all of the games from 8-man to 4-A as we roll out the 13th season of “Friday Night Live” the states most comprehensive multi-media coverage of Iowa high school football. This 2011 season we have 27 affiliates on the Iowa Sports Connection Radio Network that contribute with scores and reports on our Friday Night Live broadcast that is also on WHO TV 13.2 and KCRG 9.2 and streams live on iowasportsconnection.com and ustream.com. In addition, we have exploded on the web with our new website iowasportsconnection.com and with live scoring on 13now.com as we average over 100,000 visits to our mobile scores pages. I thank you as always for picking up a copy of the Iowa Sports Connection magazine the cornerstone of our expanding multi-media firm. The magazine is also in a digital format housed on the front page of iowasportsconnection.com as we continue to develop multimedia options to follow active Iowans “From the Pee Wees to the Preps to the Pros” and “From the Missouri to the Mississippi”!

Have a Championship Month! God Bless You and God Bless America!