Name-a-Day Calendar, March 10: Iowa State Cyclones

Page 124 of 365

Chosen in: 1895

Chosen by: A Chicago Tribune sportswriter

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The 1895 tornado season was particularly rough for Iowa, as the natural disasters disrupted (and even ended) dozens of lives across the Great Plains that spring and summer. At this time, tornadoes were still colloquially known as cyclones.

In late September of that year, the football team at Iowa Agricultural College embarked on what they expected to be a fairly unsuccessful three-game road trip. In their first game at Purdue on September 26, they went down 6-0 early and then forfeited. Two days later, they took the field against Northwestern just hoping they could score a single point. They, uh…won 36-0. Total rout.

The Chicago Tribune described the action thusly in their game story, titled “Struck by a Cyclone”: “Northwestern might as well have tried to play football with an Iowa cyclone as with the Iowa team it met yesterday. At the end of fifty minute’s play the big husky farmers from Iowa’s Agricultural College had rolled up 36 points”. This story didn’t have a byline, so it’s not immediately clear who wrote it, but whoever did is responsible for the Cyclones nickname that still stands today. Iowa Agricultural College would rebrand as Iowa State in 1898, and that’s how we got the Iowa State Cyclones.

Iowa State’s mascot is a cardinal named Cy, a nod to the school colors of cardinal and gold. He debuted in 1954.

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