Do Iowa and Iowa State battle on the recruiting trail?

HawkeyeReport.com publisher Tom Kakert has done this for a while, I want to say like 14 or 15 years. He has a good sense of who Iowa recruits and same for Iowa State

They don't butt heads in prospect's living rooms as much as you might think.

We'll try to do this as the needle moves with Hawkeye recruiting. Big thanks to Tom! I hope you enjoy.

I'll be chatting tonight on HawkeyeReport.com.

Do the Hawkeyes and Cyclones Battle on the recruiting trail?

On Saturday afternoon the Hawkeyes and the Cyclones will meet for their annual battle for the Cy-Hawk Trophy.

No matter which side of the rivalry you are on, the state of Iowa seems to stop and watch the tussle between the two biggest college programs in the state.

If you take a look at the rosters for both schools, you will find a lot of native Iowa's residing on them. Be it scholarship players or walk-on's, the backbone of each program is usually made up of young men who grew up in the state of Iowa.

Iowa lists 119 players on their current roster. Of those 41 grew up in the state of Iowa. That comes out to just over 34% of Iowa's roster.

Iowa State lists 114 players on their current roster. Of those 35 are from the state of Iowa. For the Cyclones, that comes out to just under 31% of their total roster.

While some are walk-on players, it's still pretty remarkable that a state of approximately 3 million people has 76 players on the rosters of the two biggest schools in the state. You can see why both schools get pretty excited about this game every year.

As you might imagine the two schools probably butt heads on the recruiting trail from time to time, but not as much as you might think. Really it depends on the year you choose to look at.

For example, with the Class of 2014, the two schools both offered six in-state prospects. Iowa ended up with three of them (Jay Scheel, Matt Nelson, and Keegan Render), Iowa State ended up with one (Allen Lazard), and two players decided to join programs outside the state of Iowa (Ross Pierschbacher went to Alabama and Trevon Young

ended up at Louisville). Both prospects who decided to leave the state were initially committed to Iowa.

The one recruiting battle of 2014 that drew the most attention involved, who is a legacy recruit for the Cyclones. The four-star wide receiver committed to the Cyclones early on, but at times he wavered a bit in his pledge, taking a peek at Notre Dame along the way. It was Iowa State head coach Paul Rhoads

that raised a few eyebrows on signing day when he took a shot at the Hawkeyes when speaking about Lazard.

'He's not going to a school in Northern Indiana,” Rhoads said on signing day in reference to the Fighting Irish. 'Boy, they wasted a lot of time and money. He's not going to another school in the state who feverishly tried to call him a half dozen times in the last week.”

Shots fired.

By the way, Kirk Ferentz

chose not to get into a war of words with Rhoads over his statements in February, but on the HawkeyeReport.com podcast this summer, his son and Iowa offensive line coach, Brian Ferentz, denied that the phone calls ever took place.

The two in-state rivals are bound to go head to head off the field in recruiting. That is the nature of recruiting and in a small state where the most talented prospects are coveted, it's going to happen.

The Class of 2015 has been a much different story with respect to the recruiting battles. It's as if they have been two ships passing in the night. Iowa has verbal commitments from 14 players and 6 are from the state of Iowa. That list includes Landon and Levi Paulsen, Jacob Newborg, Drew Cook, Ryan Boyle, and Brett Waechter. The Cyclones have countered with three of their 10 commitments being from the state of Iowa. The ISU commits: Anthony Nelson, Bryce Meeker, and Julian Good-Jones

have something in common in that they never received a scholarship offer from Iowa. All six of Iowa's verbal commitments never received an offer from the Cyclones.

It's really pretty crazy when you think about it.

A state like Iowa tends to not produce a lot of high level football players when you compare it to states like Texas and Florida, but in 2015, there are zero players who were offered that held scholarship opportunities from both schools.

It's almost like after fighting with each other for years, the two schools decided to walk away from the fight for at least one recruiting cycle.

As recruiting continues to speed up each and every year, the 2016 recruiting cycle is already well underway. While the offers haven't been pouring out of the football offices for in-state prospects, you can bet that in the next year they will get back to normal and battle off the field on the recruiting trail once again.