I had a friend named Greg back when I was a freshman in high school.

He was a pretty nice guy most of the time and a close friend of mine since early elementary school.

There was just one thing about Greg.

He had a knack for rubbing people the wrong way.

In fact, it took only about a week for my friend to pick his first high school fight.

What was interesting about this first encounter was the opponent he’d found for himself.

A fifth-grader.

Now, you have to understand — this kid was huge for a fifth-grader.

He was big, he was mean and he was much scrappier at 9 than I can ever hope to be.

But he was still a fifth-grader.

Tonight at 7 p.m., the Cyclone football team will pick a fight with college football’s fifth-grade equivalent — a Division 1-AA school.

Its season opener against the Indiana State Sycamores will raise many of the same questions and test many of the same loyalties that Greg’s fight did about this time seven years ago.

When I first heard about my friend’s schoolyard tangle, I didn’t know what to think.

Of course, I didn’t want him to be hurt or humiliated.

Regardless of the opponent, Greg was my friend, and I needed to support him.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as that.

I’d be lying if I said a part of me wasn’t hoping the little ruffian would hammer Greg into the ground.

If nothing else, it would have taught him a valuable lesson about picking fights with fifth-graders: You can’t win.

It really doesn’t matter how you perform or who comes out on top.

In the worst possible scenario — if you manage to somehow get beat — no loss could be more humiliating or more destructive.

Unfortunately for Greg and for Iowa State, the flipside isn’t much better.

If you win, you still lose.

If the Cyclones polish off the Sycamores tonight as quickly and easily as is predicted, what have they really accomplished?

A win will mean little to coaches, players and educated fans.

It’ll mean even less to scouts and recruits.

And, in what could become this season’s most bitter irony, it will mean absolutely nothing to the NCAA.

In a season in which the Cyclones will field their most competitive team in recent memory and have an outside shot at the six wins necessary to advance to the postseason, this victory will offer nothing.

A 6-5 record for this season’s Cyclones will look no more impressive to college football’s governing body than a 5-5 record.

Of course, if Iowa State could have picked a fight with one of college football’s scrawny junior highers, none of this would be an issue.

A victory over Akron or Ball State would have at least counted as a victory.

There are dozens of teams in college football that are no better than Indiana State, but still have that Division 1A distinction.

But because the Cyclones couldn’t schedule the likes of a Middle Tennessee or a Kent, their first game may as well be an intra-squad scrimmage.

Since Division 1-AA victories are ignored, ISU will need to win an impossible seven games this year to make it into a bowl game.

All because they felt the need to pick a fight with a fifth-grader.

Back in high school, my friend Greg made short work of his young sparring partner, and the Cyclones will certainly do the same tonight.

Afterwards, they’ll need to evaluate what they really accomplished in winning.

And how much they may have risked in the process.