Iowa State’s matchup with Bowling Green comes with a strange little thread running through it, one that reaches all the way back to a downtown New York City weekend in 1995.
That was when Troy Davis and Eddie George crossed paths for the first time at the Heisman Trophy presentation ceremony at the Downtown Athletic Club. Davis, George, Nebraska’s Tommie Frazier, Florida’s Danny Wuerffel and Northwestern’s Darnell Autry were all finalists that year, sharing the pre-Heisman spotlight and even sitting next to one another as the winner was announced.
Davis had a real case to be there. His 2,010 rushing yards led the nation and stood as the most by a sophomore in NCAA Division I-A history at the time. George wasn’t far behind, finishing fourth nationally with 1,826 rushing yards for an 11-win Ohio State team coached by John Cooper, who was part of Iowa State’s famed “Dirty Thirty” team of 1959.
George took the trophy in a landslide. Davis finished fifth.
Now George is back in the picture as Bowling Green’s second-season head coach, and Saturday he’ll be on the sideline in the stadium where Davis piled up most of his 4,382 career rushing yards. Davis also turned in enough in that building to finish second to Wuerffel in the 1996 Heisman voting.
“I can say I’m the only running back to get 2,000 yards and not get the Heisman,” Davis was quoted as saying afterward.
The connection keeps stretching a little farther, too. The 0-2 team George brings to Jack Trice Stadium was hammered 56-7 by Nebraska last Saturday, in the same stadium where Frazier guided the Huskers to national titles in 1994 and 1995.
On the field, one of the big questions for Iowa State is whether the first-down passing game changes at all. After the Cy-Hawk game, Jimmy Rogers said, “I thought we could have thrown the ball a little bit more, especially on first down,” and added, “It was pretty consistent that we were running on first, and throwing on second just based off of their ability to stop the run.”
The numbers back that up. Iowa State passed on only three of 20 first downs last Saturday, and all three throws fell incomplete.
Aiden Flora handled 11 first-down carries for 60 yards, including a 34-yard run in the third quarter. Jaylen Raynor ran three times for 10 yards, while Cameron Pettaway, Arnold Barnes and Easton Miller each had one first-down carry for a combined nine yards.
“It’s been addressed,” Iowa State OC Tyler Roehl told reporters Tuesday.
That leaves Bowling Green with a simple problem to solve: crowd the line and dare Iowa State to throw, play it more honestly and see if the Cyclones stay with their recent tendency, or just stick with the base defense and let the game sort itself out.
If that’s a little too deep in the weeds, fair enough.
There’s another practical angle to Saturday, too: how much run backup quarterback Connor Moberly might get if the game unfolds the way it’s expected to. The redshirt sophomore from Southeast Polk completed his only pass and rushed twice while playing three snaps in the opener against Southeast Missouri, and another chance would make sense with Big 12 play opening next Saturday against Utah.
Bowling Green’s numbers suggest Iowa State should have room to do that. The Falcons are 136th nationally in scoring at 10.0 points per game, 125th in rushing at 94 yards per game, 110th in passing at 173 yards per game, and 132nd in total offense at 268 yards per game. Defensively, they’re 135th in total defense at 505 yards allowed per game and 132nd in scoring defense at 38 points allowed per game.
And then there’s the off-field question that probably doesn’t matter to anyone except people who love a good stadium debate: the best concert ever held at Jack Trice Stadium.
Some people are already pushing the Kenny Chesney Original Vibe Room Tour 2027, which includes Eric Church, Sheryl Crow and Greylan James and is set for June 5 next year. Maybe it ends up in the conversation.
Best ever? That’s a tougher sell when the list includes the Rolling Stones, U2, Billy Joel, Elton John, George Strait, Luke Combs, Jelly Roll and Post Malone.
Jack Trice also hosted Farm Aid VI in April 1993, with Arlo Guthrie, Neil Young, Lyle Lovett, Martina McBride, Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, the Charlie Daniels Band and others listed in Iowa State’s historical archive. And back in July 1990, the stadium was the site of the Paul McCartney World Tour.
Whether Chesney’s show belongs at the top depends on taste. The football part, though, is a little easier to sort out.
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For Iowa State, the broader takeaway matters because the Cyclones are part of the same conversation as programs like Boston College, Duke, Arizona and Cincinnati, all of them trying to navigate a spending landscape that can shift quickly from year to year. The piece makes clear that these are ranges, not confirmed figures, and the real tension is how much room schools have to move when the competitive baseline keeps rising and some programs are already working from a thinner margin than others. [Read more 🡒]