Everyone can't mean every one because I don't want it gone.
1) There is some truth to this. But mostly because the Big10 was perceived to be down substantially because of the swoons by Mich and Penn State.
But let's face it; if ISU were gone, Iowa is more likely to schedule Kentucky or Duke rather than an LSU or Arkansas. Those are not step up games from ISU.
That may be true, but what they are likely to do and what they should do to improve their schedule are two different things.
2) this is competitive rivalry. No way to spin a 9-9 mark the last 18 years. Where it hurts Iowa is that Iowa State can't seem to win more than two games in most seasons after the Iowa game.
It's not competitive in my opinion because in each of those years Iowa is the favorite, has ridiculously better facilities, more recruiting power, future NFL'ers, I could go on. Iowa just plain falls on it's face in that game. To put it another way, I would define it as competitive if there was an equal match up without such a clear expected winner. We win, it's "Meh, they should play tougher competition" We lose, Ames treats it like the Cubs winning the World Series and then the media tells us all year how we shouldn't be ranked because we lost to a 1-11 team. Nothing, whatsoever, good comes out of this game other than the casual bumpkin fans getting a kick out of it.
So either Iowa should have been more like 15-3 and/or have Iowa State to win 6-8 games consistently.
