Were this about attendance, Iowa State football would fear no “Alliance”

The problem is, it may not matter

This isn’t a long diatribe about the ACC/Big Ten/Pac-12 “Alliance.” Although I will say I prefer a different name for the marriage between the three conferences.

Might I suggest “NATO?” or “New World Order?” Or “Crosby, Stills and Nash?”

The commissioners of the three leagues are holding a joint press conference at 1 p.m., CT, so I’ll make this quick since it’s almost noon as I finish this.

This obviously looks bad for Iowa State and the seven other remaining Big 12 schools with the upcoming departure of Oklahoma and Texas. Grim, actually.

The Gazette’s John Steppe had a recent story explaining how Iowa State being in a lesser league after the Big 12’s current media rights contracts expire. It’s not good news.

What makes this especially galling from an ISU point of view is that its football program is among the upper crust when it comes to support, attendance, facilities and vibrancy.

Yes, the winning the Cyclones have done recently with four straight bowl seasons is a new phenomenon and historically the program has been one of major college football’s least successful on the field. But that’s in the past. Iowa State won the Fiesta Bowl last season, and is ranked No. 7 in the preseason Associated Press rankings.

The games are played on the field, not in preseason rankings, but only Notre Dame can match the Cyclones’ three preseason first-team All-America selections.

News flash: Iowa State has a football program, folks.

Of course, the same has been said of Boise State for a long time now, and Boise State isn’t in a major conference and won’t be.

Boise State, though, doesn’t have a program that ranked 21st in attendance in 2019, the last pre-COVID-19 season. It doesn’t have a program that ranked 30th in attendance from 2015 to 2019. Iowa State does.

In fact, in 2019 the Cyclones out-drew a total of 32 programs from the ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC. Its 59,794 average out-drew half of the Big Ten’s 14 teams, and 12 from the ACC, eight from the Pac-12, and even five SEC programs.

Iowa State had a bigger home attendance average than USC. And Florida State. And Oregon.

Had the 2020 season been open to everyone, the story would have been the same.

And it may not matter.

Part of me thinks you just can’t leave a program that averages 60,000 fans and continues to grow a winning profile by the wayside, to a Great Plains version of the Mountain West Conference.

Wake Forest and Duke averaged under 27,000 fans two years ago. Rutgers averaged 30,082.

How many ACC teams other than Clemson interest you in 2021? How many don’t, other than Duke, Wake Forest, Boston College, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Georgia Tech, etc., etc.?

How many Pac-12 programs interest you in 2021? None are in the preseason top 10.

But that stuff is secondary.

Blame Texas. Iowa State joined an entity with the Longhorns in 1994 and it served ISU very well. But as Benjamin Franklin said, “If you lieth down with dogs, you shall rise up with fleas.”