Years ago, when the Iowa/Iowa State football rivalry was hotly contested and the outcome differed from year to year, the ISU players wore jerseys with the phrase “Beat Iowa” emblazoned on the front.

Finally, they made good.

27-9.

In Iowa City.

Unbelievable.

I was awakened Saturday morning at about 11:30 by the phone ringing. It was my boyfriend, asking my roommate and I if we wanted to go to lunch.

And by the way, he said, the Cyclones are winning.

We turned on the TV. The score was 17-3. But it was only the first half — plenty of time to blow it in typical Cyclone fashion.

At halftime, it was 20-3. Could this actually be happening? Nah — this is Iowa. They’ll storm back in the second half, we won’t make the adjustments, and the game will go like it always does.

After all, I was reminded, we were leading Colorado last year by two touchdowns going into the fourth quarter, and we still managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

But in the second half, we hung on, brilliantly outplaying a dilapidated Iowa team.

We did everything right — something that has never happened before, or at least not for a long time.

Unbelievable.

I have to admit that I don’t like the way athletics have taken over universities across the country. It’s a shame that alumni care more about their alma mater’s football and basketball teams than they do about their computer labs or chemistry departments.

But I love games like this one.

This specific victory was 15 years in the making. It not only ended Iowa’s dominance over ISU, it stopped the Cyclones’ seven-year road losing streak, which saw the team go 0-30-1.

It was a classic David and Goliath match-up. Iowa was favored by 28 points. Even I considered betting against the Cyclones.

But they proved everyone wrong.

As soon as the game finished, ISU students went crazy. Cheers erupted all over campus. Fans sang, chanted and screamed for joy at the thought of finally beating the overconfident and arrogant Iowa team.

People poured onto Welch Avenue, cheering, waving and honking car horns.

You could just feel the love.

What is it about a game like this that brings together an entire campus?

While the win proved that you can never count the little guy out, it also proved that no multicultural center, no administrative mandate can bring people together like a big football win.

This win united students of all colors, sexes and personalities. People who didn’t know each other and will probably never meet again were smiling at each other, congratulating each other, high-fiving each other in the street.

Random passers-by on Welch jumped into trucks of people they didn’t know, just to celebrate.

All it took was one car horn honk for a group of people to erupt into screams for their team.

Even when administrators wouldn’t let students onto the stadium field, together the students found a way to party. They simply found another goal post that would serve their purpose just as well.

Everyone, young and old, Iowa native and out-of-state transplant cheered the team on their arrival back in Ames.

Why? Why did even people who couldn’t care less about most sports celebrate and take pride in Saturday’s victory?

Sports unite people like nothing else. ISU students and boosters can say that we have a better school than Iowa, but it takes a high-profile win like this to solidify the argument.

And, as improbable as it seems, we relate to athletes in a way we don’t relate to others.

Most of us are nothing like members of the football of basketball teams. We can’t run as fast or jump as high as they can, and we never will. We can only live out our dreams of glory through athletes, be they celebrity sluggers or unknown linemen.

Why else would grown men cry when Mark McGwire hit his 62nd home run, breaking a 37-year-old record? Or why would a whole country laugh when Sammy Sosa says, “Baseball has been very, very good to me”?

There’s a part of every successful athlete in all of us.

That’s why we ISU fans keep going to the games, weekend after weekend, regardless of the point spread. And it makes us jump for joy when our sometimes-lowly team finally makes good against Iowa.

Way to go, Cyclones!

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Sara Ziegler is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Sioux Falls, S.D. She is the managing editor of the Daily.