So here’s what happened. Friday eve, a buddy calls, says he has a ticket, and it can be mine. Long story short, I drive to Des Moines and end up at the same hotel as the football team. This morning, I’m up and walking around, sure ‘nuff, there’s all of them.

I walk past Barney Cotton on my way to get coffee (good thing the SOB got out of the way, too) and Carl Pelini gets off the elevator at the same time I’m getting on, and at that moment I realize I can say nothing to these guys.

They’re working, for crying out loud. And I’m not going to disturb them. And I realize that if I say a word and we lose, it’ll be my fault because I probably have bad karma from all the bad things I’ve done that I’ve never been caught for.

Anyway, I’m late to the game because before we go to the game, we have to stop off at the Iowa State Marching Band Contest. I kid you not. I miss the first touchdown, but it’s on the DVR. I hear about the first drive, with eighteen fumbles, but it’s on the DVR.

Ah, gameday in Ames. 

• Fumbles. I’m sure everyone will be bitching about fumbles. Here’s the thing. Go back and look and tell me how many of them were created by #23 - true freshman cornerback Leonar Johnson. The guy can hit like a locomotive and is a phenom at tackling.
• What’d they have, one or two first downs in the first half? It wasn’t much, but then we came out flat in the second half and tried to let them back in the game. What is it with the third quarter that we can’t seem to play with intensity, wallowing around like pigs in mud?
• Quentin Castille’s running style is making me crazy. Get lower, dammit!
• Our offensive line run/drive blocks only sporadically. That’s not all bad, because I can live with the offense we have.… or better yet, maybe it’s better that we’ve stopped trying the ‘square peg/round hole’ theory to offense and realized this is the offense that works best. Do you have a problem with that?
• Larry Asante, much better. Much better overall defense I think, but part of that was Austen Arnaud’s accuracy problem in the first half.
• Don’t know how well you could tell on TV, but the wind with kicks was just nasty. It killed them in the air, so, you could complain about the punting and it might be fair. Or you might just chalk it up to the wind. Whatever’s easier.
• Joe Ganz still in the game late? Lee or Witt going to see the field at a all this season? 

Great entertainment was provided by two guys behind me, who proved that, yes - with an 11:30 am start you can still get up and get plenty plastered by game time. One slept through the first quarter and well into the second. He was apparently awakened by his buddy late in the second quarter, and he wasn’t happy about it.

Still the first guy continued with hilarity, including cheering for the wrong team about half the time. His best comment of the day was late in the fourth quarter:

"I gotta stop being a Cyclone fan.… and a Cubs fan... and a Bears fan. Man, my life sucks!"