Wide Right Natty Lite Podcast

The early signing period for college basketball recruiting has arrived. We brought Rivals national basketball analyst Corey Evans on the podcast to discuss the four players Steve Prohm will sign in the next few days. We know the hype surrounding this class but Corey thinks the class could be even better than the hype. “I think this could turn out to be a Top 10 class,” Evans said. He compared one of the recruits to Michael Carter-Williams and said Iowa State might not be done yet on the recruiting trail. Could Tyler Harris still be in the mix? “He is 50/50 on whether to sign in the fall or the spring. I could definitely see Iowa State adding him at some point as I believe it is 50/50 between Memphis and the Cyclones,” Evans said about Tyler Harris. If you want 15-20 minutes of straight Iowa State basketball kool-aid this is your podcast. You can follow Corey on Twitter @coreyevans_10. Levi and Austin stayed on after Corey hung up to discuss this week’s football game against Oklahoma State. Is this the

We here at Wide Right Natty Lite love some high quality satire and humor. It should come as no surprise that we are big fans of Ya Boy Matt Campbell on Twitter. Austin and Levi welcomed @NotMattCampbell onto the podcast to discuss his Twitter account, ISU vs TCU and where the Cyclones and Matt Campbell go from here. After Saturday’s big win over the Horned Frogs, Ya Boy penned a nice note to Cyclone fans and their dedication to their favorite team.     If there is anyone that knows what is going on inside the head of Matt Campbell, it is Ya Boy. He gave us some insight as to what he thinks Matt Campbell will do this off-season after already watching him leave once from Toledo. We re-evaluated the season expectations and took a look at what it would take for Iowa State to make the Big 12 championship game. Finally, we took a look at the Big 12 action this week and made our predictions for the West Virginia-Iowa State game. Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes and give us a 5 star review. We’ll read any r

It has been twelve looong years since Iowa State football took up a spot inside the Top 25. The wait is over as Iowa State checks in at #25 this week in the AP Poll. Is this team for real? We discussed Iowa State’s rather workmanlike victory over Texas Tech. How many of you were waiting for the other shoe to drop and Texas Tech to go on a fourth quarter run?   ISU plays for a share of first place in the Big 12 Conference this Saturday. Is playing in Dallas a realistic scenario or fool’s gold at this point?   We brought in our resident scout Josh to take us through the numbers with TCU coming to town this Saturday. Who has the advantage when ISU is on offense? When ISU is on defense? Austin loves palindromes making Saturday’s win especially sweet for him. It is the second one of the year. Is another one in the works? We made our big, bad, bold predictions for Saturday. Will Iowa State be looking down on the rest of the Big 12 after Saturday? Congratulations to Bill from northwest Iowa for earning liste

We all have stories to tell. We hear some of the best ones around a campfire, during a night out on the town or while we are catching up with old friends at a wedding. Everyone lives an interesting life and has stories they can tell, but sometimes keep close to their vest. Paul Shirley has some incredible stories to tell and he holds back no details during his latest book Stories I Tell On Dates.

10/11/17: Recapping the Biggest Win in School History and Previewing ISU-KU

These podcasts during the fall months are meant to be heavy on football conversations. Steve Prohm didn’t get the memo. He left Levi and Austin no choice but to discuss the recent recruiting news. Three out of the last four weeks we’ve been able to welcome a new member to the 2018 Iowa State basketball recruiting class. This week it was George Conditt, a 6’10” center from Illinois. Prohm finally got the e-mails, tweets and messages from fans telling him to recruit tall guys! It worked! Just kidding, you weren’t the reason they reeled this one in so stop sending him notes you creeper. We discussed how big it would be for Prohm to finish off the 2018 class with Talen Horton-Tucker. National Championship or bust in our honest opinion. Finally, we shifted gears to our Iowa State Cyclones football team. What the hell happened Thursday night and were there any positives you should take from that game? We’ve predicted wins in every game to this point, did either of us have the cajones to call our shot against O

It was good to be back to discussing an actual football game. The bye week was rough, but football is just hours away. The boys from Barking Carnival joined Levi, Matthias, Matt and Austin to discussing a myriad of topics, some of them football related. What is the first thing you do when your significant other goes out of town for a few days? Next we broke down the Iowa State vs Texas game from about every angle imaginable. Texas has talent, but will the talent prevail this Thursday evening? We talked about the early line (+4.5) from Vegas on the game and why the money has poured in on the Longhorns who are now almost a touchdown favorite. How does Texas stack up with Iowa State’s best opponent to date thus far, the Iowa Hawkeyes?

We have arrived at the longest week of the college football season, the week of the BYE. Fortunately for Iowa State fans things are looking more promising than they were last year at this time when they opened as a 4 point underdog to BYE. Another week, another big basketball commitment for Steve Prohm and the Iowa State men’s basketball team. This time it was Tyrese Haliburton, a 3-star combo guard out of Wisconsin, joining the Cyclone recruiting class of 2018. While we were on the topic of shooty hoops, we discussed Iowa State’s chances of making it to a 7th straight NCAA tournament. The future is bright, but will it start shining as early as this season?    

Shortly before the podcast was set to go live, a bombshell dropped in the world of Iowa State basketball recruiting. Zion Griffin, one of the top players in the class of 2018 committed to Steve Prohm and the Iowa State Cyclones. We can’t think of a better way to kick off the 2018 class than landing the four-star forward. Josh, Levi and Austin debated and discussed Steve Prohm and Fred Hoiberg’s high school recruiting and what it means for the program going forward. After the dust settled and Austin ironically fumbled over his words discussing Sergio Dipp’s poor showing, we moved on to the Iowa State-Akron football game. Josh, our resident scout, broke down Akron’s offense and defense and what they will bring to the field Saturday morning. Look for Josh’s preview of the game this Friday. Where has Deshaunte Jones been? What is wrong with Mike Warren? We made our fearless predictions for the week and each volunteered to sleep in Matt Campbell’s bed. If you listen, we promise it will make sense....kind of.

The boys are back again. This time with Iowa State’s prized 2018 quarterback commitment Re-al Mitchell. Re-al talks about why he chose Iowa State, how much interaction he has with the staff, what he is trying to improve on this year and who he compares himself to among the current Big 12 quarterbacks. Mitchell is an impressive young man that undoubtedly fits the mold of what Matt Campbell and company are looking for on their football team. The California native will be getting his first experience of the Cy-Hawk rivalry this Saturday in Ames for a visit. He is already beginning to develop a hatred for the Iowa Hawkeyes. I’m sure he will be all-in on the rivalry after Saturday. After Re-al hung up to do what we can only assume is piles of important homework the boys discussed this Saturday’s Cy-Hawk game. Where does Iowa have the advantage? Can Iowa State exploit Iowa’s defensive secondary? We made predictions for this Saturday’s game...and once again we think you will agree!

Welcome back to football season Cyclone fans! CloneTeach, Matthias and Levi called collect last night in order to deliver you the first regular season installment of the podcast. While Levi and Matthias will be pacing themselves (alternating between Natty Lite and whiskey) in the tailgate lot Saturday before the game, CloneTeach will be trying to keep two children under the age of three alive (and also pacing to keep from falling asleep before kickoff). Not all heroes wear capes. Remember though, in our own way we are all excited for Saturday night. We talked about the Iowa State offense and whether or not Jacob Park could walk on water. Will we see Joel Lanning on the offensive side of the ball this Saturday? The defense currently has two #7’s. What gives? We brainstormed ways they could get away with having two people with the same number on the field at the same time. If two girls can share one cup, two players should be able to share one number right? Before moving to the special teams units, we got s

We brought in Andy Garman, KCCI Sports Director, to help us explore the topic of media bias and whether or not it exists. Garman, a University of Iowa graduate, had some really good thoughts on the matter and put things into perspective for both Cyclone and Hawkeye fans. “It wouldn’t make sense for me to alienate half of our viewers by favoring one team over the other. Ultimately, if we are covering one team that means we aren’t covering another and that is a problem to some fans,” Garman said. “With Iowa and Iowa State I hope one team goes 11-1 and one team goes 12-0 and I don’t care who wins the Cy-Hawk game” While we had Andy on the podcast we discussed our holdout in starting Game of Thrones, who the most interesting Cyclone in the world was and what the future holds for Matt Campbell and Iowa State football. We thank Andy Garman for taking the time to chat with us and look forward to continuing the conversation down the road.

We decided to bring our dear friend and resident WRNL bracketologist Shelby Mast in to discuss why he has the Cyclones in the field as an 8 seed and just how accurate these brackets are. During our discussion we explored why the top seeds remain the top seeds year in and year out, and how you can make somewhat accurate predictions this far out. While Iowa State is losing a bunch of talent, other schools are in the same boat. Some teams like TCU and Iowa are returning a lot of talent, yet TCU is in the field and Iowa is still on the wrong side of the bubble. Why is that? It is easy to predict where the blue bloods will end up in the field next year. The hard part is determining how teams going through coaching changes and roster overhauls (like Missouri) will finish the 2017-18 season. Every year the committee is seemingly moving the goalposts when it comes to assessing the resumes of bubble teams. We discussed what Shelby has heard will change this year in the selection room. Finally, we discussed whethe

While many around the state are lamenting the change in law allowing amateurs to shoot off fireworks at all hours of the night (and morning), we discussed why Matt Campbell might bring more fireworks to Jack Trice Stadium. With the ever changing landscape of television and how we, as fans, watch our favorite teams we talked through the growth of Cyclones.tv, how it impacts the journalism program at Iowa State University and where it goes from here. Walters took over the radio play-by-play duties for Iowa State when his friend and mentor Pete Taylor passed away. John reflected on his time working with Pete and what he meant to Iowa State University. The common denominator for both Pete Taylor and John Walters is Eric Heft. Heft, who has served as the color analyst with both Taylor and Walters, is as colorful as they come. We discussed what kind of relationship he has with the Big 12 officials. Finally, with fall around the corner, John gave us his insight into what we’ll see this season from Matt Campbell’

March Madness Preview

To start our conversation, Skip discussed his role as the Director of Football Operations. What is it like scheduling Matt Campbell’s day and what does the bill look like for a team meal? With practice during the day, how difficult is it to schedule classes for student athletes? When Matt Campbell brought over almost his entire staff from Toledo, some questioned the decision at first. After over a year of them being in Ames it has become clear this is a big part of their success. Just how close is this staff and how much fun do they have with each other? We took a moment to discuss some of the top storylines from the spring: Allen Lazard’s senior season, Chase Allen’s first season and whether Joel Lanning will see more snaps on the offensive or defensive side of the football. With so many Ohio roots, we discussed the Akron non-conference game this fall along with the possibility of returning there for non-conference games in the future. With so many Cleveland roots, which professional sports team does this

National college basketball writer Reid Forgrave joined us on the podcast to discuss a number of college basketball topics including how far he things this veteran group of Cyclones can go. As spring football has begun across the nation we first discussed Reid’s piece about a former Iowa high school football player that took his own life after suffering from CTE. We highly encourage you to check it out here. It has certainly changed the way many of us view the game. We transitioned to a lighter note and discussed some college basketball, specifically our Iowa State Cyclones. With a veteran laden group, we asked Reid how far he thought Iowa State could go. “In the past I’ve been guilty of penciling in Iowa State to the Final Four. I won’t be doing that this year, but I think if Deonte Burton gets hot it could happen. Second weekend is probably a good goal for this team,” Reid explained.

The last time we talked to Shelby Mast, the conversation centered around whether or not the Cyclones would make the tournament field. He had them slated in the field as a 10 seed at the time, but with work left to do. Fast forward a couple of weeks and the tune is drastically different. We talked with USA Today Bracketologist Shelby Mast Tuesday evening to get the scoop on the ‘Clones.

USA Today bracketologist Shelby Mast joined the podcast to discuss where Iowa State stands after the big win over Kansas and a tough loss to the Texas Longhorns. Some have argued that the Kansas win was almost worth two wins. Is this a fair assessment? We looked into our crystal ball and tried to predict what type of finish the Cyclones would have to have in order to make the NCAA tournament. Remember, Shelby makes his predictions based on current resumes, not projected resumes. We did ask him to make a projection though. Just how many teams can the Big 12 expect to get in the NCAA tournament? Will teams like TCU and Texas Tech sneak in or come up short? Shelby thinks the conference will get between 5 and 7 teams in the dance. The committee is scheduled to release their top 16 teams at this point in the season on Saturday evening. It is pretty obvious that this “bracket release” will mean very little in the grand scheme of things, but what does it mean for bracketologists like Shelby? Finally, Iowa State

Austin and Matthias were joined by Alex Halsted from 247 Sports to discuss the 2017 recruiting class that will be faxed in on Wednesday morning. Yes, we spent 30 minutes drooling over 17 and 18 year olds, but you all are listening (we hope) so don’t judge us. Just hours before recording Keontae Jones, brother of Cyclone Deshaunte Jones, committed to Iowa State. Halsted was able to describe just how big of a deal this was for the staff and where this puts the current class nationally and in the Big 12. Matthias, who thinks the world revolves around offensive linemen, had to ask about the two 5th year seniors who will be joining the Cyclones in the trenches next year. Alex and him went on to discuss what a potential offensive line could look like next year with the return of Jake Campos and Julian Good-Jones. Speaking of big guys, we discussed Kamilo Tongamoa and why he’s been flirting with the Oregon Ducks. Ok, there might be a couple of reasons why, but is this an innocent fling or is he going to leave us