The funny thing about "tradition" is that a few really good years -- "remember when" years, as I will call them -- help to whitewash a lot of history of bad football. Iowa is a good example. They've had almost as many really bad seasons (especially the 60's and 70's) as they have good ones. But most Iowa fans still have a clear memory of the Hayden Fry era and that nice little run that Ferentz had from 2002-04. And the history-minded Iowa fan has read all about the glory years of the Evashevski era in the 50's. So, instead of lamenting the equal history of bad years, many Iowa fans wax poetic about the occasional conference championships and All-Americans and measure the stature of the program based on those accomplishments.
Kansas State is probably an even better example. For the better part of 100 years, they were awful -- the worst program in major college history. But then Bill Snyder comes along and works his magic, and suddenly the Wildcats are finishing in the Top 25 every year and competing for conference championships. Now, K-State fans define their program based on the level of success to which Snyder took them. Wildcat fans are now quick to point to the Snyder years to refute the argument that their program is the worst ever in college football.
Even though Iowa State is historically a better program than Kansas State (a .459 all-time winning percentage compared to .433), we don't have nearly as many "remember when" seasons as K-State does, and certainly not as many in recent history. In fact, when you analyze it, Iowa State really hasn't had many "remember when" seasons at all, and even those that we remember fondly don't quite hold up to the glory years of other programs. Iowa State's most notable "remember when" season was probably the 1959 "Dirty Thirty" team. Unfortunately, it says something about the depth of our tradition when the most celebrated team in our program's history went 7-3 and finished tied for third in the conference.
That's not to diminish the accomplishments of the 1959 team or any of the other memorable seasons in Cyclone history. (I still have a soft spot in my heart for the '89 team that finished 4-3 in the Big 8 and had an exciting offense headlined by Blaise Bryant.) It's just obvious that our tradition honestly doesn't stack up to those of any of the other teams in the Big 12, even the least of whom can point to eras of much greater success than anything we've seen consistently in Ames.
So, yes, we may have the worst tradition in the Big 12. Which, as dmcone pointed out earlier in this thread, says something about the character of Iowa State fans. Fans of the rest of the conference teams can ridicule us all they want. Few of them can boast the kind of loyalty and dedication to their teams as we've shown to our Cyclones.
