Exactly 100 chapters and more than 300 pages.

Former ISU students Alex Halsted and Dylan Montz co-authored “100 Things Iowa State Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.” Halsted and Montz graduated in May 2014.

The book is part of a Triumph Books series that dives into the history of almost anything. 

“It kind of encompasses all sports, which makes it kind of unique to the series,” Halsted said. “But we thought that was important because Iowa State fans have been known to support the women’s basketball program and obviously with six gold medalists for wrestling that’s a rich part of the history.”

This wasn’t Halsted’s first book.

He started a Twins blog when he was 14 years old and worked on it for four years. When he was 16, he started writing for Minnesota Gameday, a magazine that was sold outside the Metrodome, and then Twins Magazine, the official publication of the Twins.

Halsted’s next destination was Iowa State.

Like a lot of incoming students, Halsted  was nervous and had no idea what to expect from college. On top of that, he was tasked with writing a book. 

Triumph Books emailed Halsted about writing “100 Things That Twins Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die” about a month before he left for Iowa State.

The majority of the book was written within that month. He finished it in his dorm room, and it was published later in 2011.

“I talked to the managing editor of Triumph Books on the phone and talked about how the Twins book went and I don’t think they knew how old I was until after I started,” Halsted said with a chuckle. “But we talked about how they thought that it went pretty well and all that and I at the time was just on the phone with him and told him eventually I’d like to do an Iowa State book.”

Halsted first proposed the idea for his second book in June 2011 and it took more than three years, September 2014, for it to get approved.

“The biggest hurdle was to show them the loyalty that Iowa State fans have, win or lose, that they might be interested in this book,” Halsted said.

This wasn’t the first collegiate book Triumph Books had published, but most of the previous books focused on football and men’s basketball or on just one sport. Most books were also written about national powers such as USC, Texas or Notre Dame. Kansas has a book that just focuses on basketball.

“The biggest thing we tried to do was try to encapsulate the 100 greatest games, personalities, moments from Iowa State history,” Montz said. “That’s [all of the ISU sports]. … That’s kind of the unique thing about this book is that it kind of touches on a lot of those things.”

Halsted and Montz already had most of the ideas and research done before the book was approved because of the three-year wait. All they had left to do was get the interviews done and write the book.

When Halsted wrote the Twins book most of his research was from old newspapers and magazines. He said he did less than 10 interviews. With the ISU book, Halsted and Montz did a combined 39 interviews.

“We interviewed 39 people from Iowa State history,” Halsted said. “Way back to say, Gary Thompson and Dan Gable to Fred Hoiberg, Cael Sanderson and those type of people.

“[Co-authoring] allowed a lot more interviews. It allowed us to be more creative in the writing. You have to tell stories more so than just put out numbers and stuff like that. That was kind of our goal to tell stories.”

The duo did all of the interviews from September to December of 2014, Montz said.

Co-authoring helped Montz, too. He used Halsted as a resource throughout the process.

“You never really know what it’s going to be like until you get in there and do your researching and do your interviews and go through the writing process,” Montz said. “It was kind of nice having someone who had gone through it before and could kind of point things out.”

After the interviews and research were done, it took about five months to write the book. They submitted the manuscript Feb. 9, 2015 and edited and tweaked it twice, Montz said.

Halsted and Montz credit Iowa State and the Iowa State Daily with being able to make this book a possibility.

They used their connections and relationships with people in the ISU Athletic Department to help set up interviews with people and get photos.

“[Going to Iowa State] helped a tremendous amount,” Halsted said. “I think it helped get [the book] approved because we both had worked for the Iowa State Daily for three and a half years covering football, basketball, wrestling, volleyball [and] gymnastics.

“I think just having the background, they probably felt more comfortable in our ability to know the surroundings, so obviously that helped. Working at the [Iowa State Daily] I think probably helped both of us become obviously better writers and reporters.”

Halsted works for Scout.com and Montz works for the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

“I definitely couldn’t have been able to co-write a book or have my job at the Gazette without some of the experiences I’ve had with the Daily or in the Greenlee school,” Montz said.

The book can be pre-ordered on amazon.com and will be released Sept. 1.