Game Day: Ames, Iowa

Tigers vs. Iowa State Cyclones November 15, 2008

Tiger AP ranking: 12th

The 2008 football season entered its 12th week in far less topsy-turvy fashion than the season before. Perennial powerhouses Texas, USC, Alabama and Florida beat their second-division brethren with the reassuring dependability of an atomic clock. Replacing the 2007 mayhem, the country’s economic meltdown provided the nation with its giant-fall-down-go-boom fix. The $700 million government bailout of financial institutions didn’t budge the credit market. The Big 3 Auto CEOs flew to Washington in private jets, groveling for a handout. Triple-digit Dow plummets became commonplace, leading to citizens reacting to “brokers with their head in their hands” photos with a collective, blasé shrug.

No longer did economists argue whether the nation was in recession. The D word got thrown around a lot, too. Across the U.S., people completely stopped buying cheap crap that breaks easily—a frightening prospect for retailers with the holiday season fast approaching.

An economic slowdown of gargantuan proportions calls for decisive action. My bold plan: to crap my drawers and stop spending money. The austerity program would begin with Missouri’s game against the Payless Shoe Store of the Big XII, Iowa State University.

There are lots of discretionary costs that can be cut from attending football games. Do you really need a cushy cushion and seat back? Cousin Jimmy would say yes, but the austerity program responds with “Bring a blanket, or sit your ass on the metal bleacher and take it.” Must you buy beer? Not if there’s an unattended cooler (code word "UC") in the tailgating lot.

The biggest single cost to attend an away game, of course, is travel. One downside of the Tigers’ recent popularity involved the late announcements of kickoff times. If a game took place in some god-forsaken outpost—let’s call it “Waco”—you didn’t know whether it would start at 11 a.m. or at 7 p.m. until after your travel plans were locked in. Often, the only viable option involved getting to town on Friday night and staying Saturday night. That was my plan—until the austerity program.

ISU and Mizzou were set to line up for yet another night game, this one kicking off at 5:30 p.m. I decided to drive from my lean-to in Chicago to Ames, watch the game, and drive back, all in the same day. According to Google maps, that’s 722 miles of my sexy America.

It may come as somewhat of a jolt that it’s not easy to find a driving companion for 361 miles of flatness each way to see a game in 20 degree weather where your team is a four-touchdown favorite. Heavy D turned me down. The Dude guffawed and asked if I was really going to drive both ways in one day. I assured him that the austerity program calls for sacrifice, and that driving a long distance in a warm car, on an interstate highway, does not equate with Evil Knievel jumping the Snake River Canyon.

The night before the trip I met up with David R. to discuss the automaker bailout. On the way there I left a message with another friend, on the hope that he might be prone to an impulse road trip. A text came back immediately:

“When are you driving tomorrow? I’m a big believer in helping pass highway time. And there are things we need to discuss."

The hook had been set. I relayed the particulars, including the chilling but necessary “wheels up at 10 a.m.” part. My friend immediately switched to radio silence. By the time I asked David R. if he was interested, I wasn't even serious about it. After several beers, we concluded that bringing back the El Camino could well reverse America’s economic fortunes.

I loaded my M3 with warm weather gear and Trader Joe snacks and backed out of my garage into the borderline freezing weather. The possibility of snow never materialized save for some sparse flurries. As I drove down the Kennedy Expressway out of Chicago, I noted that gasoline in the city cost $2.95 a gallon. I am turning into my father.

Beside me sat the kitty. Not my friend Kitty—she laughed at the road trip idea, too—but rather an envelope containing four $20 bills, one $10, one $5 and five ones. On road trips, the kitty allows all the participants (me, in this case) to enjoy a jolly ride without thinking about money. The kitty works like any ante system: Everyone puts in the same amount, and then all group expenses are paid out of the kitty. If there’s money left over, it’s split evenly. If the money runs out, everyone re-kitties.

Once free of Chicago's gravitational traffic pull, I opened up the E46's 333 hp, heading west on I-88. The tollbooths began piling up by the buttload. That’s why you need the smaller kitty bills. I always take tolls as a sign that you can speed, because all of the law enforcement is concentrated around making sure that no one runs the toll gates. This reasoning gets me plenty of tickets.

Road trips on the austerity program require the purchase of gas in places like Rock Falls, Illinois, where it’s 87¢ less than Chicago. With the money you’ve saved, look for a deli with a reclining dill pickle on its logo and you're in for some fine road dining. Arthur’s Garden Deli in Rock Falls sells a turkey and cheddar sandwich that sets you back less than three large. The austerity program not only builds character, it includes haute cuisine, so long as you can eat it while driving. Excuse me, brother trucker, may I borrow your Grey Poupon?

After visiting some of the finest bars the Big XII has to offer, am I concerned about missing out on the nightlife of Ames? Not really, because Ames nightlife is pretty much an oxymoron. There’s rumor of a reverse curfew in Ames to encourage the townspeople to stay out past 8 p.m. Like the Missouri Tigers, executing my austerity game plan with a minimum of drama requires singular, pinpoint focus.

The drive across Iowa takes me past towns with names like What Cheer. The picturesque barns and golden fields may look boring to some, but I find them beautiful. Monet spent months in fields such as these, painting the same stack of hay at differing times of the year and different times of day. Many of us spend our days in ergonomic chairs, in antiseptic offices, and think artists crazy. Monet knew otherwise.

To get to Jack Trice stadium, you hang a Ralph at Des Moines. I didn’t allow myself much pre-game time, lest I be drawn into sin and depravity by the siren song of the Ames honky-tonks. Parking across the street from the stadium costs $15 and is worth every penny, because this is where you want to be prior to an ISU game. Ames proper may be duller than laundry day, but the opposite holds for the flood plain surrounding the field. ISU tailgaters always arrive in force, unorganized and spirited, many in team color striped bib overalls. As I pulled on my Soreil boots and trudged across the grass lot, I passed students shotgunning Bud Lights with one hand and heaving cornhole beanbags with the other (they missed on both ends). Their team hadn’t won a conference game, and the faithful could not have given less of a flying fuck at a rolling donut. Walking through the grinning, sometimes painted faces, you couldn’t help but feel sorry for fans who root only for frontrunners. Cyclone fans rock like a hurricane.

Dusk fell on a game day temperature that felt cold but not bitterly so, thanks to the modest wind. Important, because the stadium’s wedge design and sparse surroundings turn the slightest breeze into a whipsaw gale force. I tracked down Mizzou Alum Association President-elect Jackie Clark’s tailgate. Jackie's the Holly Golightly of tailgating, always showing up at the right party with a tiger boa and a joke. This gathering featured a 22-long converted hearse limo with gold pinstripes down the side and a life-sized tiger affixed to the roof. The beer, cheese and crackers were all gratis, fitting the austerity program budget like the Thinsulate gloves I was wearing.

The Iowa State Cyclones have been housed in the same conference as Missouri since 1908, but it’s a friendly rivalry. ISU posted losing records in 2006 and 2007, and at 2-8 coming into this game, they had locked up a third. But during that time they’d largely defanged the Tigers. In 2005, Mizzou quarterback Brad Smith got knocked woozy by the Cyclones, and a freshman named Chase Daniel had to come in off the bench to lead the team on two touchdown drives, salvaging a 27-24 OT win—the second year in a row the Tigers beat the Cyclones in overtime. In 2006, Mizzou provided ISU with its only conference win as a potentially game-winning touchdown was called back on a controversial holding call that the Big XII later admitted was a boo-boo. No matter the state of the Cyclone program, they seemed to play the Missouri Tigers even up. Head coach Gene Chizik (“the Chizzer”) was donning an official ISU stocking cap for his second year, and the fan base seemed genuinely excited about their young team. Between the cold weather and ISU’s weird voodoo that they do on ol’ Mizzou, it was difficult to find a Tiger fan expecting a blowout.

Stadiums named after people can generally be divided into two categories: those honoring benefactors and those where a legendary coach has been chiseled into the façade. Jack Trice was neither—he was the first black athlete to play for Iowa State. On October 6, 1923, the night before he started his first game, he wrote a letter. “Everyone is expecting me to do great things.” it read, “I will.” The next night he suited up against the University of Minnesota. Early in the game, he broke his collarbone. He continued to play, but was trampled by three Minnesota players. He still insisted that he could play but was removed from the contest. Trice died three days later from internal hemorrhaging. His legacy was sadly forgotten until ISU students discovered a dusty plaque commemorating him in the 1970s. A groundswell to rename the stadium gradually gained momentum, and in 1997 Cyclone Stadium was renamed Jack Trice Stadium—the only NCAA Division 1-A stadium honoring an African-American.

Jack Trice would have been proud of the effort his team exerted this cold November night. They hit hard, blocked well, pursued the play until the whistle blew, and several other coaching clichés that actually win football games.

But the Cyclones were also inexperienced and prone to mistakes. The Tigers took the field with the knowledge that Texas had methodically crushed Kansas earlier in the day, meaning that if Mizzou prevailed they’d clinch the Big XII North Title outright. The team played like they were in a hurry to claim it. Maclin returned the opening kickoff 37 yards to the 41. Daniel completed his first 16 passes. Early in the second quarter, Mizzou led, 14-0. The ISU student side, which never came close to filling up, began to empty. The smart money said that several shotgunning, cornholing tailgaters never made it inside.

This represented my first time viewing the new ISU uniforms in person. The team’s old uniforms fell just a mite short of the understated Penn State look. The pre-2008 red helmets featured a red cyclone with the head of a cardinal (the ISU mascot has been a cardinal for years, perhaps because dressing up an undergrad as a weather system is cost-prohibitive). The team used to bow to the temptation of wearing all red—or, officially, cardinal. Red jerseys, red pants, red helmets. If you think that might look clownish, bingo. But now the unis featured the retro-Iowa State combo of red jerseys and gold pants. Classic. So classic, in fact, that if you didn’t notice that the Cyclones jumped offside constantly, you might mistake them for the USC Trojans. Replacing the Cyclone on the helmet was the new “I STATE” logo. Unimaginative, but a boon to the merchandising department.

ISU did not go quietly into the soft, cold night. Early in the second quarter they picked Daniel off on a deflected pass that should have been caught. Three plays later, though, William Moore returned the favor, stepping in front of a receiver and batting the ball to himself, gliding in 17 yards to make it 21-0. For all practical purposes, that was the football game. But the Cyclones never let up, performing like a team that wanted desperately to improve. They moved the ball through the air—with the large deficit, they had no choice—and ended up posting 336 passing yards, only two less than the Tigers. Other than the precision of the Tiger passing game, the story of the night belonged to Derrick Washington. He averaged over 11 yards per carry, including one against the grain cutback for 52 yards, with Maclin providing an escort into the end zone.

At roughly 9 o’clock, Mizzou cornerback Carl Gettis intercepted the Cyclones again. With the score 45-20 and Missouri grinding out a final drive, it was time to start the long ride back. I skedaddled back to my car, beat traffic out of town, and loaded up on cheap gas and cheaper coffee as I listened to Mike Kelly and John Kadlec call the final minutes of the game through Sirius.

The winner of the Missouri-Iowa State game receives arguably the stupidest trophy in sports, the Telephone Trophy. It came into being following a cross up in the lines to the press box that allowed the coaches to hear each other’s plays during the 1959 game. The problem was fixed before the game started, but Ma Bell decided that their screw up was worthy of commemoration with a phone on a wooden block. The cradle of the phone is painted Mizzou colors on one side and Iowa State hues on the other. A trophy is a trophy, I guess, and the players embrace the weirdness.

More important, The Missouri Tigers had won the Big XII North title and would take on either Texas, Texas Tech, or Oklahoma in the championship game on December 6th. But the Big XII North trophy did not make the trip to Ames, so, boys, rally 'round the telephone.

For long stretches, I had 88/80 all to myself. I bumped up the cruise control and made the most of the fuzz’s absence. Even more tolls stood in my way than the front end of the trip, and the change rattled in the kitty envelope. Rolling into Chicago around 1:30, I trudged up my back stairs to greet my dog, Georgia. She is not on the austerity program, and had earned raw hamburger as a treat for her patience. I slumped in a chair and tallied the cost:

• Gas $57
• Tolls $12
• Lunch $3
• Parking $15
• Brat & hot chocolate $5
• Road coffee & sandwich $4

I slapped the $3 and change remaining in the kitty on the kitchen table, and crawled upstairs into the fart sack. The austerity program, like all character-building activities, isn’t for sissies.