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Fun Facts: Iowa-Iowa State. Two teams enter the Octagon. One walks out.
Actually, it isn’t an octagon, and both teams will survive. It’s called hyperbole.
Sep. 3, 2025 9:50 pm, Updated: Sep. 4, 2025 12:12 pm
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
Saturday’s Iowa-Iowa State game will be televised by Fox, which had none of the top 10 shows in the Aug. 18-24 Nielsen ratings for traditional television.
That’s a Fun Fact, and so are these:
- Iowa has won the last six times it played at Iowa State.
- The road team has won the last five games in the series.
- Iowa State’s last three wins in the series have been by three points or less.
- The “under” has paid on 17 of the last 20 games between the two teams.
- Iowa has 43 Iowans on its roster, Iowa State 44.
- Cyclone quarterback Rocco Becht has touchdown passes in his last 20 games, the longest active streak in the nation.
- Before Becht, the previous two Cyclones quarterbacks who started against Iowa are now in the NFL. Brock Purdy is the established starter for San Francisco, and Hunter Dekkers is on New Orleans’ practice squad.
- Iowa has rushed for at least 268 yards in three of its last six games.
- Only Rice (45 yards) had fewer passing yards in its first game than Iowa’s 48. Both teams won.
- Iowa had just two penalties in its opener, and Iowa State is averaging just two penalties over its first two games.
- Eight FBS players have kicked field goals of 55 yards or longer this season. They include Iowa State’s Kyle Konrardy (nation-long 63 yards) and Iowa’s Drew Stevens (55 yards).
- Since the NCAA stopped allowing kickers to use tees in 1989, the longest field goal at any level is 65 yards, by Kansas State’s Martin Gramatica in that ‘89 season.
- Iowa’s Xavier Williams was the first Hawkeye freshman to rush for 100 yards in his debut since Shonn Greene in 2005.
- In their last 10 games, Iowa State is 7-3, Iowa is 6-4, and Alabama is 5-5.
- This will be the 73rd Iowa-Iowa State game, played two days after the 134th Coe-Cornell contest.
- Fox is televising this game. Iowa has winning records on CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, FS1, NBC and Peacock, but is 12-16 on Fox.
- This is only the third time Iowa State has been ranked when it played Iowa (1978, 2021).
- Gus Johnson will do the play-by-play for Fox on this game. A different Gus Johnson averaged 17.1 rebounds per game for the NBA’s Baltimore Bullets in the 1970-71 season. No NBA player has averaged as many since Dennis Rodman in 1992-93.
- Urban Meyer is part of Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff panel that will be in Ames Saturday. Meyer was 187-32 as a college coach. He was 2-11 in the NFL, fired before his only season with the Jacksonville Jaguars was over.
- Ames was named after 19th Century U.S. Congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts, influential in the construction of the transcontinental railroad. He was censured by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1873 for "seeking to procure congressional attention to the affairs of a corporation in which he was interested.“
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