AMES, Iowa -- Sixty thousand Iowa State fans were cheering, and they were cheering for me.
Almost.
Technically they were cheering for my plaque -- not the stuff on my teeth; the other kind of plaque -- as I presented it to Cy the Cyclone, the Iowa State mascot who was deemed the Most Dominant College Mascot on Earth in an insanely popular contest here on SPiN earlier this summer. The award ceremony was Thursday night at halftime of the Cyclones' season-opening football game against Kent State ... and so there I am, on the field, being cheered by 60,000 people.
|
|
| The plaque awarded to Cy and Iowa State. (CBSSports.com Original) |
They were cheering for Cy and they were cheering for themselves and their school, but it felt like they were cheering for me. And it was seductive. Suddenly, anything seemed possible. Give me the Iowa State men's basketball job, and I'll conduct myself in an even seedier fashion that Tim Floyd, Larry Eustachy or Wayne Morgan -- anything, if it'll let me hear those cheers just one more time. Give me the Iowa State football job, and I'll channel my inner Pete Carroll and look the other way while my players are living like kings and acting like thieves and beating the hell out of students and other civilians. Just so long as those players reward me with enough victories to make another night like this one possible.
You've not been cheered until you've been (kind of) cheered by 60,000 people. The applause for me and for my plaque almost made me forget my original intention of this here SPiN story, which was to say the entire event was rigged.
How do I know? Take a look at the 'i' in SPiN. Look at the dot on that letter. What do you see? I see a cyclone. And now, after a six-week contest, the Most Dominant College Mascot on Earth is a cyclone? Right.
The tournament was set up to mimic March Madness, with 16 schools in each of four regions: Predators, Land Animals, Humans, Inanimates/Mythical Creatures. Iowa State was the No. 5 seed in the Inanimates/Mythical Creature region.
Each contest was allegedly determined by an Internet vote, and when every mascot-vs.-mascot battle was finished and the Cyclones were the last mascot standing, more than 8 million people had come to SPiN to vote. The championship, a battle between the Cyclones and the Razorbacks of Arkansas, allegedly drew 1,741,864 votes. The Cyclones received 53 percent of the vote. Allegedly.
I see a conspiracy. Look at the Cyclones' path to victory. In the first round, they drew the 12th-seeded Billikens of St. Louis. The Billiken was created in 1908 by an art teacher in Kansas City. I always thought the damn thing was an elephant, but it's described on various websites as a chubby character with pixie ears, fat cheeks and an ear-to-ear grin. Sort of sounds like new SLU basketball coach Rick Majerus, come to think of it ...
Anyway. A Billiken had no business being in this tournament. Neither did the Cyclones' second-round opponent, the Chanticleers of Coastal Carolina. After thumping the Majeri and then the Hanging Light Fixtures, Iowa State's mascot dispatched the Drexel Dragons in the Sweet 16 and the Southern Utah Thunderbirds in the region title game.
In the Final Four, the Cyclones confronted the Spartans of Michigan State. The Spartans? Dominant? Ask Alaric and the Visigoths about the dominance of Sparta. Alaric went on the road to trounce the host Spartans in the year 396, yet 16 centuries later, Sparty won the Humans region to reach the Mascot Final Four? What other disappearing characters were competing with Sparty in the Humans region -- the Ken Lays, Cito Gastons and Fightin' Dan Patricks?
This thing was rigged, but I'm past that. I'm still glowing from my night in Ames, where they really know how to treat a dignitary such as myself. Parked right up front. Ate all the 'cue I could eat. Got interviewed in the press box by the student paper, then walked around the field during the game, hobnobbed with athletics director Jamie Pollard and palled around with Cy the Cyclone before the ceremony.
|
|
| Cy the Cyclone (Getty Images) |
He's a bird. More specifically, he's a cardinal. The Louisville Cardinal. So the first ever winner of the SPiN Most Dominant College Mascot on Earth is a low-pressure weather system that looks like a Louisville hand-me-down. Which would beat the actual story for how the Cyclones came to be called the Cyclones.
In 1895, as the story goes, the Iowa State football team went to Northwestern and stunned the favored Wildcats 36-0. The Chicago Tribune said Northwestern had been "struck by a cyclone" and added, "Northwestern might as well have tried to play football with an Iowa cyclone as with the team it met yesterday."
And a nickname was born.
There's something about the Chicago Tribune. In 1933, Tribune sports editor Arch Ward asked baseball to set up a star-laden exhibition to coincide with the "Century of Progress" expo that summer in Chicago. Baseball did as it was told, and the All-Star Game was born.
In all my years in journalism, I've never given a school a new name for its mascot. Nor have I created an all-star game. But I did write a story once that led to the firing of a school's basketball coach. That coach was Wayne Morgan. That school was Iowa State.
Another coincidence? I don't believe in coincidences. This entire mascot "contest," like the 'i' in SPiN, was undoubtedly set up by an Iowa State infiltrator who wanted to get me to Ames, where the passionate fan base could tell me once and for all what they thought of my story that led to the downfall of seedy Wayne Morgan and the arrival of classy basketball coach Greg McDermott.
No wonder they gave me that standing ovation.
