3. Iowa State got a big win, and …
It could be argued that it’s among the biggest wins in the program’s history.
It’s certain the program’s most important and biggest bowl win.
Success is hardly a regular thing for Iowa State football. It has played for around 130 years and never won an outright conference title, it finished on top of the Big 12 standings before the championship game for the first time ever, and it just one its fifth bowl game in 16 tries.
The other bowl wins had their significance, but beating Miami University – not the Hurricanes – in the Independence Bowl wasn’t that big a whoop nationally.
Beating Pitt in the 2000 Insight.com mattered as the first ever bowl win,, and taking out Minnesota in the 2009 Insight and Memphis in the 2017 Memphis were cool, this was a New Year’s Six bowl vs. the Pac-12 Champion.
Iowa State had won just the one bowl against Memphis under Matt Campbell and got rolled last year by Notre Dame in the Camping World Bowl, but now the program has nine-win season and came up with what might have been the strongest season-closing win ever.
There wasn’t anything fluky about it, and there wasn’t anything gimmicky. Iowa State was the better, stronger, sharper team.
And it has a big bowl win over a big Power Five program.