AMES – One of the more interesting things about the 2026 Iowa State football team is that so many of the challenges and opportunities, the circumstances and obstacles, the internal dynamics and the outside expectations that every single team in the country faces seem to be heightened for these Cyclones.
That’s what happens, I suppose, when you essentially have to build a Big 12 football team from scratch.
The shared understandings, shortcuts and history to make the day-to-day easier, more efficient and increasingly productive just aren’t there when two-thirds of your roster is newcomers and that last third features exactly zero (0) returning starters.
That means everything has to be built, created and willed into existence by first-year coach Jimmy Rogers, his staff and the 124 players on the roster.
When you’re building a team, culture and program from the ground up, assume anything at your own peril.
“I always put myself in the players’ shoes. Nothing matters if they don’t believe in it,” Rogers said at the start of fall camp on Wednesday, Aug. 5. “You have to have a player-type mindset of, ‘What will they take on?’ Then there’s the things they don’t like to do, but that I know that they need to do it.
“They are going to have to suffer through hard times to be the team they want to be. This isn’t for everybody. You have to be tough when you come here, and you have to be able to push through some things that are extremely challenging.”
One of the more interesting dynamics, to me, to watch unfold as the season moves nearer to its start and then progresses week by week is how the team will navigate the natural push-pull of individual intra-team competition and the collective good.
Iron sharpens iron, we’ve been told by the Old Testament and every single football coach in the 3,000 years since, but the blade then has to be wielded outwardly. Otherwise you’re left playing Five Finger Fillet, and that game has no winners.
“There’s going to be some hurt feelings,” Rogers said. “There always is. It’s how they handle it. Will they be professional?
“If I asked that team, ‘Who wants to play in the NFL?’ they’d all raise their hand. You get to that level, it’s so cutthroat that everybody’s fighting for a position, but you’ve got to be a pro about your approach to earn your opportunity and you’ve got to be ready when it comes.”
Now, when I say that dynamic can be difficult to handle under even the best of circumstances, I’m usually greeted by a retort of, ‘Just be a team player.’
Which, yeah, of course. That’s the idea, and most players eventually get there, even when they’re put in a spot they don’t like.
But it’s not easy, even when the circumstances are optimal. Which is to say there’s a culture of selflessness, team-first and constant preparedness, which usually takes years to build by a group with a shared history and trust.
Iowa State has seven months together with a bunch of players who are getting their first, last or best shot to play big-time college football, most of whom picked up their lives from elsewhere in the country to pursue that opportunity with Iowa State.
That’s real incentive to be, if not ‘Me-First,’ at least, ‘Me-Tied-for-First-with-Team.’
Which, again, is a dynamic that exists in 137 programs in the country, but it’s not hard to see how that might be – at least initially – heightened for an Iowa State team that has only been a team for spring and summer semesters.
And as much as it is a challenge, it’s an opportunity,
Because if the Cyclones can conquer those hurt feelings and missed expectations, if they can stay ready beyond the first, second and fifth depth chart, they’ll be stronger for it. As a team and a program.
“You constantly bring it back to the No. 1 thing, which is the team and the unity of the team,” Rogers said, “which is a connection through ego-less belief.”
That belief has to be both individual and collective. The idea that you work on yourself not for yourself alone, but for the group. The promise of that work being recognized, even if you’re not on that first, second or fifth depth chart.
“You’re trying to establish a culture,” Rogers said. “You told them the truth. It’s their job to go prove their own truth, and it’s our job to always consistently see them as a new version of themselves as they continuously grow.
“Not harp on what they used to be because that’s the goal – nobody stays stagnant in their growth.”
That’s the goal everywhere. It might just be a little more important – and noticable – for these Cyclones.
Iowa State columnist Travis Hines has covered the Cyclones for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune since 2012. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000. Follow him on X at @TravisHines21.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: New team heightens age-old dynamics for Iowa State football | Hines
Reporting by Travis Hines, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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By Travis Hines, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
