Big 12 Football Media Days: A Cyclone Warning for Oklahoma's Dominance
By Wendell Barnhouse
ARLINGTON, Texas – Four different quarterbacks, an unexpected coaching change, consecutive regular-season losses for the first time in two decades and a pandemic have occurred during the last six seasons for Oklahoma football. Through all that, the Sooners have won the last six Big 12 Conference titles and are favored to make it seven in 2021.
Since 2000, when OU won the school’s most-recent national championship, the Big 12 trophy has landed in Norman 14 times and eight of the last 14 seasons. The Sooners are to the Big 12 as Marvel is to the superhero movie genre. Even in comic book/film script fiction, shields and suits don’t endure (Remember, Iron Man died saving the universe from another Thanos snap.)
The case can be made that Iowa State is the Big 12 team best positioned to challenge the Sooners’ streak. The Cyclones are coming off one the best season in school history. They were 9-3 in 2020, pushed Oklahoma to the brink in the Big 12 championship game and brushed aside Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl.
And from the “did-you-know?” department: Iowa State finished on top of the regular-season standings with an 8-1 record. The Sooners finished 6-2 (season-opening losses to Kansas State and Iowa State) earning them a spot in the title game, held here at AT&T Stadium. That’s the site for the league’s 2021 media days, which started Wednesday.
Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley appeared to throw down the gauntlet during his opening remarks. "Great to be back in our second home,” referring to Jerry World, where the Sooners have won four Big 12 championship games and routed Florida, 55-20, in last year’s Cotton Bowl. (What’s cooler than cool? Ice cold.)
It’s Oklahoma’s world and the other Big 12 teams have just been living in it. That said, Iowa State – picked to finish second with four of the 39 media voters picking the Cyclones to finish first – is considered the top contender.
FOX Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt says that Iowa State has a “great chance” to end Oklahoma’s Big 12 streak.
“The last person who wants the hype about his quarterback (Spencer Rattler) being a Heisman Trophy candidate and his team maybe being No. 1 or No. 2 in the country is (OU coach) Lincoln Riley,” Klatt said. “He knows how good Iowa State can be.”
The Sooners are 50-6 against Big 12 opponents the last six seasons. Texas, Kansas State and Iowa State have each defeated OU twice during that span. In those 56 games, the Sooners have won by an average score of 45-28. In six games under Campbell, the composite point total against OU favors the Sooners… by one point, 195-194.
ESPN’s Bill Connelly, who scrubs FBS rosters to rank returning offensive production, has Iowa State ranked at No. 24 out of 127 teams with 88 percent of its production returning. The national average for this season (which is skewed a bit because of pandemic returnees) is 76.7 percent. The other nine Big 12 teams are at or below that national average; OU is 76th nationally at 76 percent.
The Cyclones return all but one starter on offense and all but two on defense. They return players who have made nearly 450 career starts and could have 17 seniors as starters.
“What I've always said about our program is we're certainly outcome aware, but that's never what we've talked about in our program,” Campbell said Wednesday. “What we've talked about is how do you put your ego aside, how do we understand process, and how do we understand our purpose. And if we can define those two things and then work to get better in those areas, then we are going to give ourselves an earned opportunity to have confidence going into the fall.”
Iowa State returns first-team All-Big 12 quarterback Brock Purdy and Big 12 offensive player of the year Breece Hall, who led FBS in rushing. Purdy overcame an uneven start to throw for 1,381 yards, rush for 233 yards and produce 14 total TDs over the last six games.
“When you talk about where our program has come and the growth we've been able to make, it's literally been on the coattails of Brock Purdy,” Campbell said of his quarterback, who will be taking part in the Manning Passing Academy starting Thursday. “We would not be where we are today without his consistency and his leadership and his demand to be the best in everything he does.”
Hall was 1-of-3 finalists for the Doak Walker Award, which went to Alabama’s Najee Harris, whose brand was burnished by the Crimson Tide’s national championship.
In addition to the football, Hall will be carrying a grudge this season.
“Trust me and mark my words. I’m gonna get everything I couldn’t have this season,” he Tweeted last January.
“Everybody says, ‘Hey, you’ve got everybody back,’” Iowa State defensive coordinator Jon Heacock told The Athletic. “Well, if we’re all back and not any better — including the coaches — and we haven’t improved what we’re doing, we’re just the same old group of guys and everybody’s gonna get better than us. I think that’s the challenge whether you were a leader who played 60 snaps a game or 20 snaps a game. You have to come back better than you did.”
Therein lies the rub. Last season is last season. In 2020, Iowa State’s pandemic schedule had the Cyclones playing three games, week off, three games, week off, three more games.
This season’s 12-game schedule has Iowa State playing the first five weeks before their off week followed by playing the final seven consecutive weeks.
From a national reputation perspective, Iowa State’s second game will be significant. In-state rival Iowa visits Ames and Campbell is 0-4 against the Hawkeyes. The Cyclones also have been plagued by early-season stumbles, going 0-3, 1-1, 0-2, 1-1 and 0-1 the last five seasons.
“That’s on my shoulders, it's probably been a failure of mine that we just haven't been able to get off to a good start throughout our tenure here,” Campbell said. “It's certainly something we've looked at.”
Iowa State plays at Oklahoma on Nov. 20, the next-to-last game of the season. That’s a date worth circling in red but it’s not on the Cyclones’ radar.
“We’re never gonna measure ourselves by playing one team, beating one team,” Hall said. “We feel like we can play with anybody. We’re not paying attention to the outside noise.”
The Iowa State program’s last conference championship came in 1912 – yes, nineteen twelve - as co-champs in the Missouri Valley Conference. The Cyclones have always been scrappy underdogs, their seasons highlighted by headline-grabbing upsets but their final won-loss record usually settling around break even.
Campbell, going into his sixth season in Ames, has established a recruiting philosophy that appears simple and sensical. He and his staff identify players they believe are talented and they don’t care about what those players are rated. Iowa State recruits its “type.” And that type has to fit the profile. If a prospect displays diva qualities or character questions, the name gets crossed off the list – no matter how much potential he possesses.
Following last season’s 23-20 victory over Texas, Hall coined a phrase that has become a program mantra: 'It's five-star culture versus five-star players.” (Thanks to the name/image/likeness policy that’s been in effect for two weeks, Hall is cashing in with t-shirts featuring his quote.)
Over the last four years, Oklahoma’s signing class has been 66 percent
“blue chips” (4-star and 5-star recruits). Over that same period, Iowa State’s ratio is… 5 percent.
“They’re not the five-star household names but they’re damn good players,” Campbell says of his large core of seniors and veterans.
Based on Massey rankings and 247Sports recruiting rankings averaged over the last four years, The Athletic came up with an “overachiever” rating. Iowa State tops the list among Power 5 programs.
A Big 12 assistant told The Athletic, “They just have a bunch of very damn good football players. From a talent standpoint, Iowa State is not there at the top of the league. From a team standpoint, they’re right up there.”
This season will determine exactly where “up there” is.