It is that time of year again, its Farmageddon week. What started out as a joke on a K-State message board, has turned into the well known nickname for the Kansas State-Iowa State football game. Weirdly I think the name has added some spice to this game. Before 2010, as a K-State fan, I never really thought about the Iowa State game. Now I really want to win it, and continue to prove K-State is the better football school.

K-State and Iowa State are very similar schools, and have a similar fan bases. Both schools are land grand schools in small population states, that have to punch above their weight to be competitive. The fan bases of both schools are passionate, and due to not being the “flag ship school” in their respective state, are really close knit. It can even be seen in the hashtag each school uses on twitter with #cyclONEnation and #Family. Which if we are being honest both are super lame.  I think Iowa State and K-State are as close culturally as schools in different states can be.

One of the most annoying parts of Farmeggedon is constantly hearing about how close Iowa State came to winning the game. Every year Iowa State always makes it a close game even when they shouldn’t, but every year K-State ends up winning. This inevitably leads to Iowa State fans, and media to talk about how close the programs are in general. When in reality Kansas State over my lifetime has been in a different class than Iowa State. Farmegeddon does a good job of showing the difference in programs even if the score of the games always doesn’t.

Beating ISU is huge for the psyche of the K-State #family. It shows how far we have come, and how much we actually punch above our weight class. There is a sense of superiority knowing #cyclONEnation envies our success. With their fans and alums constantly looking at KSU and wondering why that same success can’t happen in Ames.  I think a big reason is the bar scene is so much better in Manhattan, seriously y’all call that a bar district? I have never been more disappointed than going to Welch Avenue the Friday before the game. I know Aggieville is one of the better college bar districts in the country, but Ames really needs to upgrade its bar scene if it wants to have a good football program.

For my fellow EMAWs, it’s important that the Wildcats continue to dominate this rivalry. For Kansas State to have a chance to be relevant nationally, the Wildcats have to continue to be a better program than the Cyclones. The Iowa State game just can’t turn into toss up game when you have to play the likes of OU and Texas every year. If Kansas State is going to continue to be the program K-Staters have come to expect they need to continue to beat Iowa State on a regular basis.

P.S. Can we talk about how stupid the I-State thing is? I, for one don’t appreciate it.  It looks terrible on helmets and it doesn’t flow near as well as K-State. I mean we rarely use our K-State logo, because we know it looks bad.  Get your own nickname, losers.

P.P.S. I hear Iowa State is a basketball school, but Bruce “Custard Loving” Weber has won a Big 12 championship more recently than ISU.