With the 2009 regular season coming to a close, the ISU football team was left waiting and wondering if it would find its way into a bowl game this winter.

Iowa State’s 34–24 loss to Missouri last weekend pushed its record to 6–6, a vast improvement over its 2–10 mark in 2008.

“We absolutely deserve to go to a bowl game,” ISU coach Paul Rhoads said after the game in Columbia, Mo. “If you would poll people around the country at the beginning of the year [and ask] if Iowa State would have six wins, I don’t think you’d have very many people on the yes side of that.”

The turnaround seen under Rhoads has been dramatic, even in his first year.

Iowa State saw just five wins the last two seasons under Gene Chizik and had just four wins in Dan McCarney’s final season, 2006.

“This football team has shown great determination, great production; they’ve shown the ability to win the close game, and they’ve come to play every single week,” Rhoads said.

The Cyclones’ sixth win — Nov. 14 against Colorado — assured them bowl eligibility, but did not guarantee them a spot in post-season play.

Coming into the final two weeks of the season, 11 of the conference’s teams still had a shot at bowl eligibility.

Missouri beat Kansas on Saturday to eliminate the Jayhawks, while the other Sunflower State team, Kansas State, is left in the cold due to two of its wins coming against FCS opponents and their loss to Nebraska two weekends ago.

Baylor and Colorado are the only other Big 12 teams without six qualifying wins, as they went 4–8 and 3–9.

Having so many teams in contention for a bowl game left many Cyclone players and fans wondering if they’d even be offered a chance at post-season football.

“It’s just one of those things that we’ve got to sit around and wait to find out. It’s kind of hard,” senior safety James Smith said.

After the final week of Big 12 play, eight schools in the conference have achieved bowl eligibility: Texas, Oklahoma State, Nebraska, Texas Tech, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Iowa State.

Also, the conference has eight ties with bowl games, meaning that each of its bowl-eligible schools should be locked into one of those games.

The only trouble is waiting to find out which game.

“We’re going to come back after Thanksgiving and get back to work in the weight room and in film study and just prepare for what’s coming in the future,” ISU quarterback Austen Arnaud said. “Whatever it is coming, we’ll be ready for it”

Several prognosticators have placed Iowa State in the Texas Bowl on Dec. 31 against Navy, which has already secured its bid in the game.

Further projections have shown the Cyclones in the Independence Bowl on Dec. 28 or the Insight Bowl, also on Dec. 31.

Not knowing where his team will be for the holidays doesn’t seem to bother the coach, though.

“I don’t get over losses very well, and one of the ways to get over losses is to go back to work,” Rhoads said after the loss to Missouri.

Rhoads said a group of assistant coaches and coordinators will begin the recruiting process this week before the team sets back to practice on Wednesday.

The uncertainty in the coming weeks does present a unique challenge for the players of the struggling program.

Only the fifth-year seniors have had any bowl experience, and that was simply as spectators during their redshirt freshman season when the Cyclones played TCU in the Houston Bowl, now the Texas Bowl.

“It’s definitely different because in the regular season you know the game is coming,” sophomore receiver Darius Darks said. “Now, we’re kind of getting our hopes up and we may not even go … we’re crossing our fingers.”

In all likelihood, bowl bids will be announced within the next two weeks, after all the conference championships have been played out, and announcements for the Cyclones could come as soon as Dec. 6.