1. Who is the opponent? The Iowa State Cyclones (2-1, 2-0), who are coming off of a 37-30 win over Oklahoma at home, now host Texas Tech (1-2, 0-2), who are coming off of a 31-21 loss to Kansas State.

2. What is the time and date of game? October 10th at 2:30 p.m.

3. How do I watch or stream this game? You’ll be able to watch the game on ABC, yes, the big network. And I don’t even know if you’ll be able to stream this game.

4. What’s the opening line? Our friends at OddsShark have the opening line at Iowa State -13 and it hasn’t moved.

5. Scattershooting, wondering what ever happened to . . . George Washington Carver. Yes, that’s right, the same GWC that is famous for his peanut recipes, but he did so much more. I had never done much research on GWC, but just to be alive and earn an education is a lifetime. GWC was born into slavery, his last name Carver is from his master, Moses Carver, a German immigrant who purchased his parents, Mary and Giles. When GWC was a week old, he, his sister, and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders. Moses then hired someone to find the stolen slaves and was only able to find GWC. When slavery was abolished, GWC grew up in Moses’ home as their own children. Because black people were not allowed to attend school where he lived, he traveled 10 miles to attend a school for black children. At 13, he was at an academy in Fort Scott, Kansas, and witnessed a black man murdered by white people and skipped town where he earned his high school diploma in Minneapolis, Kansas. GWC was initially denied an education at Highland University because he was black, homesteaded some property where he cultivated his own food, then took out a $300 loan to attend Simpson College and was later encouraged to attend Iowa State in 1891 where he was the first black student and also faculty member after he received his masters of science degree. GWC was not actually given a doctorate until it was posthumously done in 1994. GWC would then go on to teach at Tuskegee University (was known as Institute at the time) for 47 years where he taught methods of crop rotation and crop self-sufficiency . . . unfortunately for you and I, nothing has changed very much when it comes to Iowa State’s coaching . . . Matt Campbell has a beard, so that’s different, but he is still wearing his signature concave baseball hat and continuing to churn out wins . . . After an initial game loss to Louisiana, 31-14, Iowa State went on the road and beat TCU 37-34 and then handled Oklahoma at home 37-30 . . . I think that Campbell has been at Iowa State for 5 years now with both Jon Heacock as the defensive coordinator and Tom Manning as the offensive coordinator . . . Heacock has been a master at coordinating the 3-3-5 defense with a style that relies versatile players that can do different things. A “middle safety” that is all over the field and a defensive line that is traditionally one of the best in the nation . . . Manning was at with Campbell at Mount Union, Toledo, and Iowa State initially, but took a year off to go to the NFL, Indianapolis, and then returned in 2019 where he’s helped create an varied and interesting offense that simply produces a ton of yards while oftentimes confounding defenses with the formations and power running schemes that are difficult to stop . . . Iowa State almost always has a dominant rushing attack, this time led by Breece Hall, and Brock Purdy has been fantastic as the Iowa State signal caller for the past handful of years . . . the family and I took a road trip and in part of that road trip, I am forced I mean blessed to listen to my wife’s music (don’t judge), which includes the Lumineers, and there was one song that had the lyric, “It’s better to feel pain, than nothing at all” and the follow up lyric was “The opposite of love is indifference” and thought those incredibly appropriate yesterday and still today . . . Maybe today you give me your best song lyric to describe how you feel . . .