Driving back from Thanksgiving break early Saturday morning, I remember hoping that the gray and rainy weather wasn’t a sign of things to come. The ominous skies had scarcely lightened by the time I hit I-35 for the 30-minute homestretch, but I was feeling something that Cyclone fans hadn’t felt in a very long time. I think we all felt it on Saturday morning.

We felt confident in our team, which had just reeled off four straight conference wins and was on the verge of playing for its first conference football title since snagging a share of the Missouri Valley Conference crown in 1912.

It was a guarded, cautious kind of confidence, but we believed in the team that was on the brink of booking a trip to the Big 12 title game in Kansas City. Even though road tripping to the game right before finals made about as much sense as Ron Artest taking a field trip into the fourth row of The Palace, we were all feeling very good about Iowa State’s chances.

Confidence? From Cyclones fans? That’s like finding an interested buyer for a used Savage Garden CD: unlikely.

After all, it isn’t a tremendous understatement to say that, after spending the better part of the last three decades in the Big Eight and Big 12 cellars, confidence isn’t exactly the Cyclones’ thing.

Confidence always seemed to desert the ‘Clones in key situations quickly, leaving them stumbling out of losing seasons and the occasional Humanitarian Bowl appearance into year after year of mediocrity.

And considering their history, it’s not as if they could learn confidence like a card trick or find it in the inside pocket of a jacket they hadn’t worn since last winter. It’s just something that has always escaped the Cyclones and their fans, like the rules of backgammon and the logic behind Nicholas Cage being a $20 million-a-picture action star have always escaped me.

But when the Cyclones took the field against Missouri at noon Saturday, there was a different aura about Jack Trice Stadium than we were used to. Even after a scoreless first quarter and two separate seven-point deficits, no one seemed to panic. When Cyclone safety Steve Paris corralled a fumble and returned it all the way to the Missouri 15 late in the fourth quarter, ISU fans were confident that, for the fifth straight game, the Cyclones were going to find a way to get it done in the clutch.

And as soon as the Cyclones’ newfound confidence appeared to be in full effect, it was dashed by an all-too-familiar wave of paralyzing self-doubt. Play calling became conservative enough to make Ann Coulter look liberal, and the silent self-assuredness of the team seemed to revert to the old days of running draws on third down and praying that something bad wouldn’t happen.

When a field goal sailed woefully right and an underthrown fade ball was picked off to knock Iowa State out of the Big 12 title hunt, every ISU fan’s confidence returned to familiar frustration.

Dan McCarney, whose Big 12 hopes had just come to a screeching halt with car crash-like violence, let out a scream that rivaled Captain Kirk’s in “The Wrath of Khan.” It summed up perfectly how everyone was feeling.

The sting probably won’t go away anytime soon, either. We’ll all remember it like the time we watched Bambi’s mom die or when we realized that the presents we got from Santa were the same ones we found in our parents’ closet a month earlier. And, even if we tried to forget, the loss is probably burned into our memories.

We just had to stand there and bear it while our glances dropped to the tops of our shoes as if they weighed the equivalent of two Ruben Studdards. It was just as well, because no one wanted to watch as the Tigers poured from their sideline onto the Jack Trice turf that was supposed to be reserved for a Cyclone victory party. As the Tigers celebrated, the Cyclones’ confidence disappeared into the gray sky along with their chance of being Big 12 champs.

But as we took the walk of shame home after a Cyclone loss, we found solace in the words of a wise man that made us reflect on the amazing run the Cyclones made instead of the heartbreaking way it ended.

After all, “‘Tis better to have played for the Big 12 North championship and lost than to have never played at all.”

Or something like that.