Iowa State football postgame mailbag: What does Cy-Hawk win mean for Matt Campbell's legacy?

IOWA CITY — Members of the Iowa State football traveling party kept digging into the box. Each person who walked by made sure to get their hands in there. Some emerged from the locker room specifically because of the box.

Inside were ornament-sized replicas of the Cy-Hawk trophy, and, with the real thing headed for a place of prestige inside Iowa State's Jacobson Building, everyone wanted their own keepsake of a moment eight years in the making.

"To be able to deliver something that I think means the world to them," Iowa State coach Matt Campbell, himself 0-5 against the Hawkeyes before Saturday, said of the victory. "It’s a great reward."

It was at times a monstrosity of a game, with special teams blunders, bad offense and poor execution, but none of that matters to Iowa State, which has been desperately trying to outmatch its eastern rival since the waning days of the Paul Rhoads era.

The Cy-Hawk trophy comes to Ames, and Iowa State won't give a good gosh darn about anything other than that simple fact.

"Not a very pretty football game, either which way," Campbell said. "But at the end of the day, that’s football.

"It’s a game of imperfection."

Here at The Des Moines Register's post-game mailbag, we strive for perfection, but we'll take some good questions if there aren't any perfect ones out there.

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Does that game mean anything?

Let's take this both from the macro and micro perspectives.

In the big picture, despite how factions of both fan bases seem to try to downplay this rivalry, winning this game is huge for Iowa State.

It ends a losing streak. It ends a narrative. It ends a whole lot of grief.

It also gives Iowa State bragging rights, recruiting talking points and leverage over its intrastate counterpart.

Caring a lot about winning rivalry games is not only OK, it's what makes college athletics a special brand of sports. If a state of 3 million people and two Power 5 football programs didn't care deeply about besting the other, what's the point of this whole exercise?

Yeah, it matters.

More: Peterson: In 99-yard drive, Hunter Dekkers became 'the guy' for Iowa State football

On the smaller scale of this season, yeah, beating Iowa is a big deal.

Think of all Iowa State has been able to accomplish under Campbell — all while being saddled with a loss by Week 2 in every single season. Even when the Cyclones didn't play Iowa in 2020 due to COVID-19, they still took their L to Louisiana.

Getting to 2-0 keeps the ceiling for what this team can accomplish high. No one is predicting a Big 12 championship, but if this game proves to be the difference between five and six or eight and nine wins?

Yeah, that matters.

Embrace it when your side wins. Deal with it when they don't.

What do you make of the red zone play-calling?

I've long thought one of the nits worth picking under Campbell (and offensive coordinator Tom Manning) is that the play-calling near the end zone often seems too cute or over-thought.

The Wildcat formation for Jirehl Brock and the designed Hunter Dekkers runs I think fall into that category against Iowa. They just seem a deviation from what works, and it feels forced rather than creative.

Having said that, though, the play call didn't make Brock fumble going into the end zone. Manning's call didn't make Dekkers throw to a double-covered Xavier Hutchinson for an interception.

The players have to make plays, too.

So, yes, I do think Iowa State's play calling could be streamlined and improved in close, but, ultimately, I think against the Hawkeyes it was more of an execution issue.

More: Iowa State snaps Cy-Hawk losing streak with game-winning 99-yard drive

Could you say the ISU O-line stepped up big in run-blocking against a good run-stopping defense? And fairly good pass protection?

The Iowa State offensive line has taken a lot of heat over the last six-plus seasons, and I think fairly so as they've clearly been a group that hasn't kept pace with the progress of improvement elsewhere in Campbell's program.

But Saturday against the Hawkeyes, they did their job admirably.

Iowa State rushed for 129 yards and allowed just one sack against a very strong Hawkeyes defense.

The Cyclones didn't put up gaudy offensive numbers, but that would've been a heck of a feat against this Iowa team. Holding their own and avoiding disaster was the bar to clear Saturday, and Iowa State far exceeded it.

With the Cy-Hawk finally in Ames under Campbell, what's left to accomplish before Campbell becomes inarguably the best coach in program history?

One of the interesting things about Iowa State football history, is I think 'greatest coach' is open to interpretation.

Obviously, some of that is due to the, ahem, less than stellar decades the football program produced, but it's still an interesting discussion.

Is it the iconic Johnny Majors, who had just one winning season but took the Cyclones to their first-bowl game? Is it Dan McCarney, whose teams had just one season with a conference winning record, but went to five (winning two) bowl games to rejuvenate the fan base?

Or can you make the case for Campbell now, with five-straight bowl game appearances, a Big 12 title game appearance and a Fiesta Bowl championship?

Heck, maybe there are even some Pop Warner or Clyde Williams stans out there, too.

What will separate Campbell, first and foremost, will be a Big 12 championship. The Cyclones haven't won a league title since 1912, so bringing home that hardware, in my opinion, would end any debate.

That's where it begins and ends, I think. To make the college football playoff in this four-team format probably means winning the Big 12, and making it in a future, expanded playoff would be monumental, obviously, but, I think, not be as meaningful as a league title (unless they made a run, of course).

Winning the Cy-Hawk is a significant accomplishment for Campbell, if only that it removes a major blemish from his resume. It's not, though, the biggest prize out there.

Those ornament Cy-Hawk trophies are nice, certainly, but here's guessing Campbell has his sights set on something that can be a permanent resident of the Cyclones' trophy case.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa State football postgame mailbag: What does Cy-Hawk mean for Matt Campbell?