Fourteen years ago, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, on the third weekend of October, the college football world saw the end of a rivalry that dated back to 1908 and hasn’t come back since.
The Battle for the Telephone is a rivalry matchup between Iowa State and the University of Missouri that hasn’t been played since 2011. The departure of Missouri to the SEC formally ended this rivalry, and clearly, we haven’t seen a non-conference matchup between the two teams since then.
One of the main reasons anyone might remember this rivalry is because of the unique trophy for the winner. A rotary phone with half gold for Missouri and half cardinal for Iowa State takes the spotlight on the trophy. The phone is placed upon a wooden base with metal reciting the winning team of the previous matchups.
The trophy was created in 1959 for the team’s 51st matchup and was given to Mizzou after a 14-0 win in Ames. That trophy is still in the hands of Missouri as well, with its final matchup in 2011 ending in a 52-17 loss for the Cyclones, meaning the final rivalry matchup ended in quite a bittersweet manner for the Cyclones.
An all-time record gives Missouri the advantage with 61 wins in its favor, 34 wins for Iowa State and nine ties.
An argument for continuing the rivalry
The Cyclones only have two active rivalry matchups: the Cy-Hawk matchup versus the Iowa Hawkeyes in the second week of every college football season, and Farmageddon versus Kansas State. But the Kansas State game will stop being a yearly matchup after this season, meaning the Cyclones will only be consistently matching up with Iowa to start the season.
A second trophy matchup would bring in fan engagement and likely make this game one of the biggest of the season, especially if Iowa State is not guaranteed to play Kansas State every season.
This game is also an incredibly historic matchup, with the game played for 103 years in a row and existing through the existence of the Big 12, Big 8 and even the Missouri Valley Conference. With Missouri moving to the SEC, unofficially ending the rivalry, an SEC versus Big 12 rivalry could be good for both conferences.
Finally, a trophy and history already exist, Iowa and Missouri border each other and Missouri is the fifth closest power conference school to Ames. Both teams have found themselves incredibly competitive in previous years.
An argument against continuing the rivalry
There are some pretty clear reasons why we don’t see these two teams play anymore. The main reason we saw the battle happen for so long was solely caused by the fact that Iowa State and Missouri were in the same conference, meaning it was easy to schedule a conference face-off between the two programs every season.
But with the departure of Missouri to the SEC in 2012, it didn’t give either team a reason to see each other before every season. The Big 12 has nine conference games, and the SEC will be moving to nine as well in 2026, which means that both teams only have three non-conference games they can schedule every season.
This is especially true for Iowa State; a protected matchup versus Iowa every year means that the Cyclones only have two games to schedule every season, and those two games are normally an FCS school and a Group of Five school.
If the Cyclones had to schedule Missouri, that would mean that Iowa State would have arguably the hardest non-conference schedule season over season.
Missouri is also bringing back a classic Big 12 rivalry with its Border War matchup versus Kansas. This means that Missouri probably won’t want to bring in another Big 12 team with the Cyclones.
If we do see a return, that would be great to see. A classic rivalry returning is always great. But even if it doesn’t, the history of these two teams and the iconic Telephone Trophy is something that shouldn’t ever be forgotten by Cyclone or Tiger fans.
