Good grief, did that just happen?

Cyclone fans everywhere have spent the past year wishing, wondering and bemoaning the end of the 2004 football season.

Better make that 2 years. For the second straight year (and the fifth in the last six years), Iowa State will make its pilgrimage to the Inconsequential.com Bowl. I guess given a near century of futility, that seems pretty sweet to some.

I guess I’m just not as grateful as I should be. I guess I am one of those fans who wants their team to take home some meaningful titles, earn some national press and make some legitimate waves. Instead, I, like the rest of Cyclone Nation, can only sit back and wait another year for the team to take that next step.

Now don’t think for a second that I am questioning the desire, effort or drive of a single player on the team.

We are what we are. We pass the ball reasonably well, and as long as Bret Meyer remembers how much more effective he is throwing than running (I can’t be the only fan who thinks he runs more like Byron Leftwich than Michael Vick), he will be excellent again next year.

The Cyclones have a decent tailback in Stevie Hicks, but his injuries all year exposed them for their lack of depth. The defense is good, but not great.

What am I leaving out? Yep, good old special teams, or in the Cyclones’ case, not-so-special teams. For what it’s worth, I don’t blame Culbertson for the loss at Kansas on Saturday.

Clearly, however, blame needs to be placed somewhere. A couple of casual observations as to why the Cyclones lost this game.

First, how many games will the Cyclones lose because they don’t give place kickers scholarships?

How many gut-wrenching games will it take? I predicted at the beginning of this season that the kicking game would cost the Cyclones a victory. I was wrong; it cost them two games.

Iowa State isn’t really built to blow teams out. Dan McCarney doesn’t run a Steve Spurrier-like attack, so it stands to reason that the Cyclones will have some close games from time to time. Imagine Mason Crosby wearing cardinal and gold; I can imagine a 10-1 record.

Is there a more valuable weapon to have than a good kicker in close games? Yes, and that leads to my other observation: coaching.

I am not one of those people who want Dan McCarney’s head on a stick every time we lose, but I genuinely believe the loss at Kansas resulted from coaching.

After the Cyclones’ fourth-down stand with about three minutes to go, I thought the game was iced.

Three of the world’s most conservative calls later, Iowa State punts, Kansas scores, Iowa State gets the ball back with a little more than a minute to play and three timeouts. Instead of going for the win with the wind at their backs, the Cyclones play for overtime. Could nobody on the coaching staff figure out why the Cyclones were 0-2 in overtime games this year?

Iowa State did more than lose this weekend, however; it spit in the eye of the football gods that made it possible for that game to have the meaning it did.

It took Bill Snyder retiring to get his team up enough to upset Missouri.

It took an impossible blowout of Colorado – at home – by Nebraska for this game to have all the meaning it did.

The football gods smiled upon Iowa State, and the Cyclones coached their way right out of the championship. If they go 2-9 next season, simply for karmic retribution, I won’t be surprised.

– Nathan Chiaravalloti is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Davenport.