Iowa State football 112th in the country?

There are 120 NCAA Division I-A (er, that cockamamie FBS) football teams in the nation.

That's a lot. If you're in the Big 12 Conference, you should never be ranked in the bottom eight of America. You shouldn't.

But the New York Times' college sports blog, which is counting down it's preseason rankings one team at a time, one day at a time, wasted precious little time getting to the Cyclones.

Iowa State, you're No. 112.

Wrote Paul Myerberg in today's Web edition of the Times:

While speaking at VEISHA, Iowa State's annual campus celebration (the largest student-run festival in the nation), (Cyclones Coach Paul) Rhoads listed Rutgers, now a Big East contender under Greg Schiano, as a model for the Cyclone program. With all due respect to Rhoads, who obviously understands the process ahead of him, Iowa State has played in five bowl games this decade; Rutgers, on the other hand, won only 32 games in the decade prior to Schiano's arrival.

Perhaps a more apropos comparison for Rhoads is that of Kansas, which staggered through nine consecutive losing seasons before finally breaking through under Mark Mangino in 2005. Like Mangino, Rhoads will need to find and develop overlooked, underrated recruits who fit his system. And yes, like at Kansas, it won't happen overnight.

The Times has nothing against the Cyclones. It ranked ISU 86th in the preseason last year, then placed it at 109th when it re-ranked the teams after the season.

Look, it isn't easy being Iowa State in football. That's not said with the  snarkiness Cyclone fans assume from anyone not wearing cardinal-and-gold who lives east of Marshalltown.

Another New York newspaper, Newsday, spelled it out with one simple fact in John Jeansonne's May 6 column about the Knight Commission.

Within the next two months, the commission expects to compete a survery of presidents at Division I schools that participate in football's Bowl Championship Series; that will deal with such matters as the surprising gap between Haves and Have-Nots - even within power conferences, such as Texas' football-team net profit exceeding Iowa State's entire athletic budget in the Big XII.

Gene Chizik didn't bolt Ames for Auburn just because his wife hated Iowa winters.

For more on the Knight Commission, go here.