We’re going bowling! Indeed, it was a long roller coaster of a season, but in the end the Cyclone football team will play one last time, in Tempe, Arizona.

You don’t need to be a football fan to smile about that. The last 12 months for this program have been a wild ride to say the least, and for them to have an opportunity to go out with a bang is, well, it’s just great.

The story is down-right classic Disney.

A team that finished near the bottom one season rallies behind a new coach and works together as a team to do something that the experts said they couldn’t.

I guess Cy could be considered the ugly duckling in this metaphor.

At the risk of being cheesy, let’s take a moment to reflect on that. It’s what Walt Disney would have wanted us to do.

We were picked to be bottom-dwellers. The Kansas State game was supposed to be a battle for last place. Nebraska seemed bulletproof. Our quarterback and running back battled lingering injuries.

Even if you’re not a football fan, you don’t have to understand that paragraph to enjoy a story in which someone overcomes long odds and does something incredible.

This season has been a fun story to follow. Not good enough to compete with a classic fairy tale, but the ending is fitting enough to sneak into Oprah’s Book Club, don’t you think?

Can’t we all identify with what this team has done? We’ve all had times when someone told us we couldn’t succeed, but we held our heads high and told the experts to sod off.

Maybe it’s “just football” to some of you, but the truth is that as Americans and human beings we take pleasure in the things we do communally. Think about what a stadium is: It’s a structure designed for thousands of people to gather together and watch something. It’s been specifically engineered to make the act of watching as pleasurable as possible. The fact is, that’s why it’s so fun to see a football game in person: The cheering, laughing, screaming and occasional cursing is a primal, communal experience. We share a common goal, we want the same thing, and it doesn’t matter that you don’t know those people on the other side of the stadium. They’re wearing cardinal and gold, and that makes them OK in your book.

Sports can be weird like that. Imagine an alien race observing from above, and how strange it must seem to gather thousands of people in such a small area to do something that’s so pointless.

It’s all about emotion. We love our school and, at the risk of being too sappy, we love each other simply for that fact that we love our school as one united community.

Maybe you’re still thinking to yourself “just football,” but there’s a reason college sports are so popular. They bring joy [and sometimes pain] to so many people, and now the ISU Cyclones will have a chance to shine on a national stage.

Undoubtedly, countless out-of-state students have had to explain that “No, we’re not the Hawkeyes.” Iowa State is a great school with a strong community and passionate alumni, but sometimes it can feel like the best-kept secret in the nation.

In fact, other than the presidential caucus, the entire state of Iowa can feel like an ignored middle child.

But now we can spend a few minutes in the spotlight, both as Cyclones and as Iowans.

See you in Tempe. Bring friends.