There has never been a bus quite like this one before.

The red paint job fades into white, each side is adorned with the new Cyclone symbol and Iowa State flags flap in the wind.

Brent Jacobson, a senior in ag studies and one of the 11 people who bought the bus, said “We just thought it’d more or less be a pretty good time to show our support for the football team and … get everyone to come out and have a good time before the games.”

Jacobson said the idea seemed to click once they started talking about it. Jacobson said he’s seen campers and RVs at games, but has never seen another bus, and certainly not one as fancy as theirs.

“You can see it really well from a distance,” Jacobson said. “Hopefully it will impress everybody.”

Eric Burchland, a senior in ag systems technology, credits his cousin, an ISU graduate who works in Ames, as being the main instigator of the bus project.

“We saw a bus last year that we liked and we always went tailgating last year and we just thought it’d be a good idea,” Burchland said.

The group bought the bus at a school bus sale in Ankeny for $900, splitting the cost evenly.

“I don’t know exactly how much we put into it,” Burchland said, but he estimated that, with renovations, the total is close to $1,400.

Since then, the owners have been taking turns paying for things and have had a lot of materials like lumber and couches donated to them, Casey Waite, a senior in transportation logistics, said.

“We haven’t had to put that much into it,” he said.

Although they haven’t contributed much to the bus financially, Jacobson said they have put a lot of physical work into it.

The group spent their summer renovating the bus, stenciling Cy on and painting it.

When they bought the bus, Burchland said, all the seats were out of it. They took it back to his house, then painted it and put couches and a cow tank in it, where they store beverages of choice, he said.

Waite said the bus features three “big, old, ugly, fluffy couches that everyone loves.”

One is black vinyl, one is gold and the third is yellow with black stripes, he said.

They also built a 15-foot deck on top out of the steel frame with a wood floor.

With a generator, a big television and stereo, three couches, tables, stools and their make-shift cooler, “the bus is ready to go,” Burchland said.

The initial run came at the Oklahoma game. Burchland said they parked the bus in the lots south of Jack Trice Stadium at about 9 a.m. even though it was a night game.

Burchland said the party didn’t really get started until around noon, but once things were going, the bus was packed.

“By game time, you couldn’t even walk inside,” he said.

Waite said just having the bus makes the tailgate seem “10 times more fun.”

“It’s a big atmosphere that we didn’t have before,” he said. “It just makes us feel like we’re more at a football game than just in a parking lot.”

“We don’t like the outcomes, but we like to watch the games,” Waite said.

The bus has also been on a couple road trips, Burchland said.

Last weekend, he said, they took it to a bar in Grand Junction, Iowa, where they had a satellite dish and were playing the ISU game.

They also plan to take it to the Nebraska game. “I have relatives out there that want us to come out and park in the Nebraska lot and harass them,” Burchland said.

During the week, Burchland said, they store the bus at a truckers’ lot in Kelley, Iowa, and get it ready during weekends.

Waite said he isn’t sure what the group will do with the bus after they split up.

“I think most of us will be around here for a few more years,” he said. “We’ve been toying with the notion of having a big raffle.”