Heirlooms, dumb luck and chance encounters
Let's get wild as I compare Cy-Hawk football week to the often random and dumb luck that reigns in my hit-or-miss vegetable garden
ANKENY — Call it serendipity. Call it dumb luck. But however you describe it, when I ran into former star Iowa State quarterback Seneca Wallace in the Kinnick Stadium tunnel last season after his Cyclones had forged a 10-7 win I knew I’d struck gold.
Oh, the irony. Wallace — who went on to become a veteran NFL backup quarterback — was basking in the afterglow of ISU’s first win in the Cy-Hawk series since 2014. It was also the 20-year anniversary of the Cyclones’ stunning comeback win over the Hawkeyes in which Wallace played a pivotal role. He called the experience “surreal” as a day that started under bright sunshine ended with ISU’s players hoisting the Cy-Hawk trophy in a driving rain.
“For us to finish the game like this, here at Kinnick, and in my first time being back in 20 years, and to see them compete, yeah, it was sloppy on both sides of the ball, but it shows the resilience of Iowa State,” Wallace told me before I said goodbye and proceeded to postgame interviews.
But why am I repeating this story? Because, of course, it’s Cy-Hawk week once again. The almost-ranked Hawkeyes face the potentially resurgent Cyclones at 2:30 p.m. at Jack Trice Stadium in a game that will be broadcast nationally on FOX.
The venerated time peg only partially explains my revisit of well-trodden ground, however.
That’s because I’m enjoying the most bountiful harvest ever from my beautiful, delicious and smoky-sweet heirloom Cherokee Purple tomato plant.
Hold up, you may say. What does that have to do with the state’s most dividing and often wacky, and surprising football game?
Bear with me as I combine vines with sidelines and goal lines.
My best defense for my Cherokee Purples is chicken wire, hardware cloth and critter repellent as needed.
That scheme has proven to be hit or miss in terms of effectiveness, so it’s apparently cyclical — just like success or failure in major college football rivalry.
Last season, the Evil Squirrels, the Pesky Chipmunks and the Mighty Raccoons made short work of those wirey defenses, leaving me perhaps 20 percent of my tomatoes.
They were cruelly effective in ruining the crop, often simply taking a single bite out of one of those beefy beauties, thus ruining the fruit completely.
The upshot? The best-laid plans for anything often are foiled by fate. Unforeseen circunstances. Strange coincidences.
For instance, Iowa State put together one of the best touchdown drives in program history in last season’s Cy-Hawk game. The Cyclones converted a stunning six third-down conversion chances en route to their only touchdown of the game that proved to be decisive. The drive took 14 plays and spanned 99 yards while whittling away almost 12 minutes of clock.
Iowa — in a driving rain — then lurched into field goal position as the clock’s final ticks waned, but a 48-yard field goal attempt went awry.
Boom: Iowa State had won the Cy-Hawk game for the first time since 2016 despite a spate of self-inflicted setbacks.
And boom again: The Cyclones would start the season 3-0 for the first time in a long time, but finished 4-8 because they couldn’t win close games after that fateful day in Iowa City.
Uncertainty and dumb luck — in the garden or on a football field — often reign supreme. No one knows what will happen on Saturday, but I do know I still have plenty of gorgeous Cherokee Purples to pick before frost creeps in and the vines die back.
And a funny thing: Just like ISU last season, my garden problems have shifted from one of my most coveted areas. I’m convinced the Evil Squirrels and Pesky Chipmunks have decided to taunt me by taking a single bite out of my peppers. Just when you surmount one challenge, backyard adversity hits elsewhere.
It’s all about mid- and late-game (and season) adjustments. And I’m ready for all of them. On Saturday and beyond.
WRITER’S NOTE: I failed to honor my once-a-week pledge this week, so will make up for that immediately and in the future.
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