This season has been a roller coaster of ups and downs for the ISU football team.

A three-game winning streak to start the season was met with a four-game losing streak, followed by a two-game winning streak for the Cyclones’ only conference wins of the season.

Now, the Cyclones (5-4, 2-4 Big 12) face their biggest obstacle this season by far – No. 2 Oklahoma State.

The Cyclones have not been fazed by the notion of being the underdogs, having only been favored in two games — against Northern Iowa on Sept. 3 and Kansas on Nov. 5 — this season.

However, saying that the Cyclones are underdogs in this game — which will be the first primetime Friday night game on ESPN in school history — is, in all honesty, an understatement.

Oklahoma State comes to Ames undefeated through 10 games, having beaten its opponents by an average of 25.4 points per game while averaging 51.7 points per game itself — which is second in the nation.

ISU coach Paul Rhoads is usually optimistic about his team’s chances against a favored opponent, but at his weekly news conference Monday, he sounded a little less optimistic and a little more realistic about the Cyclones’ chances of an upset this week.

“We’ve got to play our best game, and there’s got to be some things that adversely affect them,” Rhoads said. “We can’t go out and play our game and go up and down the field with this football team.

“They’re going to have to turn the ball over, they’re going to have to uncharacteristically throw some bad balls, miss a block, slip out of a route, things like that are going to have to take place to give us the opportunity to pull off what would be an unheard of upset.”

An “unheard of” upset. Never would you hear Rhoads — a man whose passion for his football team knows no bounds — consider the upset of a favored opponent as “unheard of.”

It is true that Iowa State has never beaten a team ranked as high as

No. 6 in the nation — the highest-ranked opponent beaten by the Cyclones was No. 7 — so Rhoads’ statement cannot necessarily be considered pessimism.

Sitting just one win away from bowl eligibility, Iowa State would like to end its home schedule with the biggest win in program history.

However, losing while still playing competitively against the Cowboys has positive implications for the Cyclones as well.

“That was a big decision for me, is just having to play all these big-time teams and playing in the Big 12 and playing teams that are top-ranked,” said quarterback Jared Barnett.

“I feel like this will be a good week for the guys that we’re recruiting to see what we can do and to see that they will have an opportunity to play against big-time teams whenever they come here.”

Of course, walking into the cage with the rabid bear on primetime television can serve as a boost to one of the heavily emphasized aspects of college football: recruiting.

You’re a high school prospect watching a school that’s recruiting you play neck-and-neck with the No. 2 team in the country in a game that’s being broadcast on ESPN, why wouldn’t you want to play for that team and work toward actually beating that school the next time the chance arises?

“This is one of things where you watch games on TV like this and you think, ‘Wow, I wish I was in that position,'” said linebacker Jake Knott. “That’s no different now. You want to have that chance to play a team like this.”

Iowa State doesn’t have to win in order to get something out of Friday’s game, it just can’t get blown out with the spotlight beaming down on it.

To say that Iowa State has its work cut out for it as a 27.5-point underdog would be an understatement of epic proportions. No, we don’t think there’s a great chance that Iowa State can pull off that “unheard of” upset.

But it may not even need to for it to be considered a win.