Hate Week: A Brief History

While we all know Purdue is our most hated rival (and I think we can all agree Rutgers sucks), if you’ve spent any meaningful amount of time in Iowa you know the Iowa/Iowa State “rivalry” is right up there with Purdue. Sure we were never officially told by our Big Ten overlords that we had to hate Iowa State and the series isn’t nearly as competitive as the one with Purdue, but damnit I don’t like Iowa State.

Look, I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere (which makes me just like every other kid born in Iowa). A lot of my good friends were Iowa State fans. They are no longer my friends. My sister graduated high school and chose to attend to Iowa State. She’s no longer my sister. The close proximity to these “people” is what makes this annual series so, well, hateful. So let’s take a trip down memory lane, reliving some of the best moments of Hate Weeks past. In case any of our Cyclone brethren decide to stop by, we’ll use words they can understand.

Pictures. We’ll use pictures. And gifs. They can’t understand words. Ugh.

We start with a look at the series overview. For you ISU lurkers who aren’t so good with the maths, that says Iowa has 41 wins to Iowa State’s 22. That’s nearly twice as many. The pretty little chart below shows us that the Cyclones kicked things off with a bang, winning the first 3 games in the series way back in 1894-1897. Iowa went on to win 15 of the next 19 meetings and Iowa State promptly took their ball and went home starting in 1920.

After 13 years of pumping themselves up in front of the mirror, the Cyclones came back for more in ‘33 only to get their teeth kicked in yet again. They apparently caught the Hawkeyes in a drunken stupor in ‘34 and stole one, then skipped down without returning phone calls, texts or snaps for the next FORTY-TWO YEARS. Once play resumed in ‘77, the sh!t show most of you know today ensued. Iowa State won 3 of the first 5 meetings before Iowa rattled off 15 straight under football GAWD, Hayden Fry.

Iowa State caught lightning in a bottle during the dark years at the beginning of the Ferentz era and pulled off their longest winning streak of the series at 5 games, culminated by the torturous 2002 showing that was Iowa’s lone regular season loss of the year. Even the youngest among us can remember what’s happened since then. It hasn’t been great for our fast-food looking little brethren to the west. But as they say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

Beyond the rivalry, let’s be honest, Iowa State is just not fantastic at playing football.

Despite that, they can be a pain in the ass. As such, we’ve developed a, uh, relationship with them over the years.

We are brothers, after all, so we do beat up on each other from time to time...

But mostly, it’s big brother beating on little brother.

Much littler brother.

Every once in a while, little brother gets a swing in, but mostly it’s just a lot of this:

And this:

And some of this:

Which inevitably leads to a lot of this in Ames:

Because, frankly, their football program looks like this:

Our friend, @HeavensHawkeye summed up their situation pretty well:

Inevitably, that will lead to plenty of this:

Followed by this in Ames:

It’s just the natural order of the universe. Iowa is generally pretty good (sometimes great) at football. Iowa State is generally not. The fans are generally OK people, but come football season, they act a little funny. Every year brings new hope, only to be swept away a week or two later. And Iowa just keeps being Iowa.

In case you missed anything from the last meeting, here’s a quick recap:

As for my prediction for this year? I think it looks a lot like this:

And just because I can never see it enough, look for plenty of this every day into eternity:

It’s a Hawkeye state. It’s Hate Week. Get yourself some McDonalds and celebrate.

Got other great pics, gifs or other media our Cyclone brethren can understand? Share ‘em with us! We’ll also take your word stories too.