Organized and determined, Cyclone Nation banded together in support of its mascot.

Through six rounds of competition over six weeks, almost 3.5 million votes were cast in favor of the cardinal and gold half-tornado half-bird mascot, making Cy the www.cbs.sportsline.com 2007 Most Dominant College Mascot on Earth.

School pride turned out a national championship of sorts last Friday, as Cy beat the Arkansas Razorback by more than 100,000 votes in the final rounds to earn the distinction.

“It was meant to be a really light-hearted and fun competition,” said Roland Liwag, producer of the contest. “But as it is, with college sports and loyalty to ones’ team, it got more serious than we intended.”

Cy beat the St. Louis Billiken, a chubby good-luck charm, in the first round, then took out the Coastal Carolina Chanticleer – a glorified rooster – and the Drexel Dragon in the next two.

Vote totals didn’t surpass 55,000 until the regionals final round, when Cy received 57 percent of the 844,443 votes against the Southern Utah Thunderbird. In the tournament semifinals, almost 2 million votes were cast for Cy, who went on to beat Michigan State’s Spartan and reach the finals.

The contest was initially promoted by the athletic department and made its way to the front of www.iastate.edu. The success of this online competition comes after Iowa State was voted to be the school with the best “student spirit” in a January www.espn.com poll.

More than 2,000 people joined a Facebook group to collaborate support. The group was created by two former ISU students and included details on the system to mass vote.

Originally posted for the Michigan State Facebook group, the system requires voters to clear and block cookies on Internet browsers to enable continuous submission.

John Bodeen, freshman at Newman High School in Mason City, created a dramatic video montage of Cy’s success through the first stage of the tournament, which has seen more than 15,000 views on YouTube.

He said it was important for the fan base to find something to get excited for.

“We’re not really good at anything else,” said Bodeen, who estimated having cast about 10,000 personal votes throughout the tournament. “And it’s something to say we’re number one in something other than wrestling.”

The Wichita State Shocker was disqualified from the competition for using a computer program to cheat in the competition, but manual mass voting was permitted.

Liwag said such a practice is unavoidable with Internet-savvy people.

“There were some people that definitely said it should be a one-vote, one-person system, but you’ve got to look at the Internet in a realistic way,” Liwag said. “There are always many different ways to circumvent technology. We went with the ‘American Idol’ vote, where they can manually block and clear caches.”

The results may be unscientific, but Athletic Director Jaime Pollard has found meaning in the competition.

“[The competition is] just another indication of how loyal and excited our fan base is for the future direction of this program,” Pollard said. “I mean, we’re up in season tickets, we’re up in donations, we’re up in number of donors and to see our fans come together and win that contest on CBS SportsLine is just another indicator that things are going in the right direction.”

Iowa State will receive a plaque for the distinction that will be awarded on campus in the coming weeks, as well an unnamed “treat,” Liwag said.