Hlas: Hawkeyes vs. Cyclones: Who Trumps who?

The nation is watching Ames Saturday.

The Iowa-Iowa State football game appears to be a big deal. The game is on Fox. Not FS1 or FS2. Not FX or FXX. Those are all real networks, by the way. There's a lot of TV out there.

Gus Johnson is doing the play-by-play for the game for Fox. Gus has a lot of fans. The Law of Gus states that wherever he calls a game, excitement follows. Gus doing an Iowa-ISU game is huge, to use a word a certain presidential candidate favors.

Speaking of which, amid the thousands and thousands of regular Iowa folk in the parking lots of Jack Trice Stadium before the game will be a D. Trump. Wherever The Donald goes, excitement follows. And attention.

Were Trump one of today's two head coaches, he would already have ripped the coach he replaced as being incompetent. In the days leading up to the game, he would have declared the opponent was a loser and called the opposing coach 'low-energy.” He would have tweeted several insults daily about the opponent and its fans. And he would have made some big promises.

'I will build a defensive wall like you have never seen before,” he would have vowed, 'and the other team will pay for that wall.”

Details on how that could possibly happen would be vague.

Trump will probably take off before kickoff, so it will be up to the Cyclones and Hawkeyes to provide the entertainment after that. For a so-called great rivalry, these two haven't combined to create a lot of great games. No college football historian has ever called Iowa-ISU one of college football's best rivalries.

Maybe the series just needs a makeover. Right now, its main drawback may be that the traveling trinket that goes to the winner is called the Cy-Hawk Trophy.

You can choose from any combination of words in all the English language and come up with a snazzier name than 'Cy-Hawk Trophy.” I went to a random word generator on the Internet. My first three tries produced 'Shameful Ancestor,” 'Industrial Poison,” and 'Sadistic Anchovies.”

OK, 'Cy-Hawk” isn't the worst possible name. Still, other in-state games are Iron Bowls and Holy Wars. We have the Cy-Hawk Trophy, part of the Cy-Hawk Series. Sigh.

Iowa is involved in four traveling trophy games. The only one with an organic name and prize is Floyd of Rosedale in the Minnesota game. Floyd may be a swine, but he has earned everyone's respect as a great trophy.

Iowa plays Minnesota for a pig, so it had to play Wisconsin for a bull? Why not play Purdue for a prize rooster and Illinois for a billy goat?

So, Gus and Donald, bring all the energy you can today. Because people in the other 49 states may need to be persuaded this game is Fox-worthy.

Now, why have I gone a tad negative about this game when both teams gave uplifting opening efforts in Week 1 to make today's game all the more meaningful?

It's because I wrote a similar version of this column four years ago. The Hawkeyes and Cyclones then played a triple-overtime game in Ames that was doggone interesting.

You're welcome.