We’ve all seen the ISU football team do the unthinkable, the improbable and the impossible.

But yet, Iowa State (5-3, 2-3 Big 12) still finds itself with another challenge, this time against No. 14 Oklahoma.

Don’t let the modest No. 14 ranking fool you; the Sooners (5-2, 3-1) have not lost in Ames since 1960. That’s 20 — count ’em, 20 — straight victories at Iowa State in the time since that loss.

“Maybe it’s just the history; when you go back to the Texas-Oklahoma rivalry, they’re always a staple of the Big 12,” said former ISU quarterback Seneca Wallace. “They’ve just always been tough. For Iowa State, moving forward to play them and be able to be a contender and beat them, it starts with recruiting; it starts with building the foundation that they’ve built in the last couple years.”

Ahh, Oklahoma, one of the bullies of the Big 12. Along with Texas, Oklahoma has pounded the Big 12 into a pulp with 43 conference titles — seven of which are Big 12 titles, the most of any team in the conference.

Renowned programs such as Oklahoma, Texas and Nebraska get the best recruits, have the best facilities and have the highest expectations of winning. While the elite teams sometimes have down years, they impose their will as the dominant forces that they are for the most part as their rabid fan bases sing their respective fight songs in tune on a national scale.

The Sooners are great and they know they’re great.

But it’s when a school like Iowa State upsets juggernaut No. 2 Oklahoma State having come in as a 27-point underdog that those “great” teams with all the chips get swatted back down to earth in the perfect embodiment of the joy of college football.

When talk of an “upset” in the NFL surfaces, can we really call them upsets?

The NFL is rooted in parity — every team has a salary cap which they cannot exceed in signing players, every player is a paid professional and even if one team out-matches the other, everyone is still the best at what they do.

But in college, you have absolutely none of that. The best schools get the best players, best facilities and will maul any lowly opponent to the fanatic cheers of their fan bases without any discretion.

That’s what makes college football so exciting — when a team with inferior resources and inferior talent upsets a heavily favored opponent, it really is an upset.

The talking heads and TV personalities on ESPN overhype upsets in the NFL all the time, and every time they do, we can’t help but roll our eyes and gag.

Nothing says “upset” more than the football championship subdivision’s Appalachian State coming into the Big House and beating No. 5 Michigan in 2007 or fellow FCS team James Madison beating No. 13 Virginia Tech in 2010.

Nothing says “upset” like Colorado — which had just one win — defeating eventual-Big 12 champion Oklahoma in 2007.

And of course, nothing says “upset” like Iowa State, struggling for a bowl eligibility, defeating statistically superior and second-ranked Oklahoma State in 2011.

If Iowa State should defeat Oklahoma this Saturday, it will be a huge upset. Not quite to the caliber of last year’s win against Oklahoma State, but akin to it in that will be Iowa State’s sixth win to qualify it for bowl eligibility.

We’re not saying it will happen per se. But if it does, there’s no question it will be huge.