To those of you who think Iowa State is a mediocre program, I’ve got some bad weed for you to smoke. First of all, I want to thank Dan McCarney for a quote that rivals one of Captain Morgan’s gems. It’s clear he wanted to pick up the slack now that the Captain has sailed away.

But back to the point. Iowa State is not a mediocre football program. In fact, it is far from it.

To realize where this program is, you have to understand where it came from. Cyclone football was awful back in the day. Some called it the joke of college football, but it was even worse than that. Cyclone football was that person who is so screwed up, you feel bad even joking about it.

Heck, the Cyclones lost to Northern Iowa not once, but twice in the early ’90s. And it wasn’t even close; the Panthers throttled them by two touchdowns each time. The facilities were of Boone High School quality and the talent was the equivalent of the fat kid in dodgeball. So to make it to five bowl games in six years is simply amazing.

Iowa State isn’t Michigan. You can’t make it to a Bowl Championship Series game overnight, unless you cheat like Kansas State. Dan McCarney has built this program from nothing into a consistent bowl qualifier doing it the right way. Iowa State may be only 39-35 in the last six years, but that is still the most wins since the early 1900s. And each year there has been a marked sense of improvement. Mediocre programs don’t get better, they stay stagnant.

Although Iowa State won nine games in 2000, the games it lost were by an average margin of 31 points. The average margin of loss in 2005? Five points, including three overtime games.

In McCarney’s first year, the Cyclones gave up 300 yards rushing per game. Three hundred freakin’ yards! Good for dead last in the entire country. Last year Iowa State allowed an impressive 101 yards – 12th best in the nation. The only team above it in that stat who wasn’t ranked was Tennessee. That’s pretty darn impressive.

Need I mention the six wins in eight years over the yahoos in Iowa City? How about being a field goal from winning the Big 12 North two years in a row? Is it the program’s fault the field goals went astray? Mediocre teams aren’t mere seconds away from winning championships.

And don’t give me this bologna that the Big 12 North wasn’t very good the past two years. The rest of the North teams went 3-1 in bowl games last year, including a win over Big Ten “power” Michigan as well as Steve Spurrier’s Fighting Gamecocks. Yet Iowa State is “mediocre.” Give me a break.

What more can you ask of a program that has the smallest budget in the Big 12? So what if Iowa State played in the Independence Bowl, Houston Bowl, etc.? They don’t just give those bids away. Do you think Notre Dame is mediocre? How about Penn State? Well, those schools have made fewer bowl games this century than the Cyclones. And this year’s team will probably be the most talented in McCarney’s tenure.

Smoke some of that.

– Brent Blum is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.