Each week Daily football reporters Brett McIntyre and Grant Wall will go back and forth, debating the state of the ISU program as well as the landscape of college football. Look for their opinions in each issue of Gridiron as well as online during weeks in which Iowa State is on the road.

It wasn’t always pretty, but Iowa State came away from its season opener against Toledo with a victory. It took three overtimes for the Cyclones to register a 45-43 win, with Iowa State giving up more than 400 yards of total offense.

Grant Wall: Panicked relief. That’s the only real way to describe my emotional state after Toledo’s final two-point conversion pass fell to the ground. Give me a few words to describe what you were feeling after a back-and-forth, gripping college football game that lasted well into the night.

Brett McIntyre: “I’m not going to my 8 a.m. class tomorrow morning.” Actually, did this just happen and is it really over? It was just a great game.

Grant: If you are Iowa State, what do you take away from a game like this? It wasn’t always pretty, but when the chips were down, the Cyclones got the job done.

Brett: Well, they won the game; and they did it in overtime. They had never won in overtime going into that game so it’s a big win to gain that experience this early in the season.

Grant: A notch in the win column is the most important thing, but the Cyclones can take some positives away from this game. The offense looked unstoppable at times. Bret Meyer was in midseason form and Todd Blythe proved once again why his is one of the top receivers in the nation. A healthy Stevie Hicks bolstered the ISU run game, giving the offense that punch needed to take the pressure off Meyer and his stable of receivers.

Iowa State’s run defense was also impressive. The Cyclones gave up just 45 yards on the ground to the Rockets. That’s an average of less than 2 yards per carry with a defensive front four that was sporting two freshmen in the starting lineup. That’s impressive for a unit that can only get better as the season goes on.

Brett: In the meantime, I think Toledo’s tight end just caught another pass. Holy smoke, that guy had 13 catches for 139 yards. In regulation alone, Toledo threw for more than 300 yards and completed nearly 80 percent of its passes doing essentially the same things all game. Granted, the defense is new and really young, but this is something that has to be shored up by Saturday to keep UNLV from hanging around and making a game of it.

And trust me, after seeing Scott Chandler be a favorite target of Drew Tate last Saturday on similar routes as Toledo’s Chris Hopkins ran, Albert Young catching passes out of the backfield and Texas Tech throwing for five scores last weekend, this is an area of the ISU defense that will be exploited many more times this year if they don’t tighten things up.

Grant: There’s no doubt about that. A quick look inside the offices of Texas Tech shows the Red Raider offensive coaches licking their chops. The Cyclones can get away with a horrendous performance in their pass defense against Toledo, but when Tech or Iowa or Nebraska gets on the field with that defense, things could get ugly quick. That is the one area Iowa State has to get better in if it wants any chance to be successful. In a pass-happy conference that saw four teams throw for more than 280 yards in week one, shoring up the ISU defense is the key to the season.

Brett: I think people may be underestimating UNLV’s capabilities as well. Let’s not overlook the Rebels. Now, they aren’t going to be as good as Toledo, but this game I think is a lot tougher than it looked at the end of last year after they finished 2-9.

They’ve got a USC backup taking over at quarterback and a host of other transfers from all over the place, including USC, UCLA and Oklahoma, who are trying to improve the defense. While I thought Toledo had a legitimate chance to upset the Cyclones last week, I think UNLV has at least a puncher’s chance to score an upset, especially if the pass defense allows the Rebels to complete the short pass and put together 75- to 99-yard drives like it did against the Rockets.

Grant: UNLV does have a lot of individual talent, but I don’t think it will be able to stay with Iowa State. For all the flack the Cyclone defense has taken, it will be much better after a week of focused practice. It will be an entirely different unit on the field. Not to beat a dead horse, but the Cyclones have to know that if their pass defense doesn’t improve, they will be stuck in neutral all season. The ISU offense is good, but it can’t be expected to outscore its opponents from the start every week. The defense has to step up and they know it.

Brett: Widening things out a bit here and taking a look around the nation, it was a fairly uneventful week in college football, but what in the world happened in Boulder. Montana State? Seriously, how ominous of a start is this for the Dan Hawkins era?

Grant: What’s worse, losing to a 1-AA team or insulting your female kicker? “Not only was she terrible, she’s a girl.” That was former Colorado coach Gary Barnett talking about kicker Katie Knida. What is a bigger black eye for the school, losing to a 1-AA team like Montana State or insulting your kicker to the media?

I’m a terrible person. Seriously though, this isn’t good for Colorado. I thought Hawkins would have this team rolling and that it could be a sleeper in the Big 12. Boy was I wrong.

Brett: Yeah, I thought Hawkins would be the answer too, but apparently he is nothing without the blue field.

How about the Miami-Florida State game from Monday, which Florida State won 13-10?

Larry Coker got things off to a bad start in trying to quiet his critics by losing to Miami’s arch-rival, but the biggest thing I saw in this game was how bad the new clock rules are for the game of college football.

With the clock no longer stopping on a change of possession, you can’t punt the ball away with, say, 2:25 to play like you could before. Miami actually punted to Florida State with 2:19 to play and then had to call a timeout since the clock doesn’t stop on change of possession anymore. The new rules have trimmed about 12 to 15 plays off of games and are killing late comebacks. Was the extra five or 10 minutes this shaved off the game that important to kill late drives?

Grant: If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. There wasn’t anything wrong with the old system in college football. I don’t understand why the NCAA implemented this rule. Fourth-quarter comebacks and late-game drama are what made college football so great. Doug Flutie, Joe Montana and Kordell Stewart made names for themselves with their late-game magic. Now the NCAA is taking away the best thing about the game. The NCAA should be ashamed of itself for a stupid decision like this, but if there is one thing the suits in Indianapolis are good at, it’s making decisions that are detrimental to a game we love.

Brett: Quickly now as we wrap up this ramble-fest, did Notre Dame look as unimpressive Saturday night to you as it did to me? No. 2 in the nation? No way. With the schedule the Irish have I’m seeing three losses. Best case scenario is two losses, but they won’t be within shouting distance of a national title when the season ends.

Grant: Notre Dame is one of the most consistently overrated teams in the nation. The Fighting Irish had a magical year last season and everyone assumed their success would carry over. Instead, the Irish looked sluggish and everyone’s Heisman Trophy frontrunner Brady Quinn looked normal. The Irish are good, but they aren’t the nation’s No. 2 team. Ohio State, Texas, USC, Auburn and Florida are all better then the Irish. They will easily make a bowl, but they won’t make a run at a BCS game. Games against USC, Penn State, Michigan and Michigan State will keep Notre Dame’s loss column full.

That’s all the time and space we have for this week. Join us again next time when we look forward to the ISU-Iowa game, as well as reminisce about the biggest game of the year, Ohio State’s visit to Texas.

Also in Gridiron:

Just for kicks

Week two figures to be uneventful

Point/Counterpoint

UNLV: The quick and dirty

ISU Players to watch

Alvin Bowen: It’s just begun

Big 12 coaches aim for improvement during second week

A look at last week