I don't live in either Iowa or Alaska.
If defeating Iowa makes or breaks your season you have set a low bar for performance. Nebraska was smart enough to give up major rivalries in the expectation that it will improve their overall standing. ISU should not be so foolish that they over emphasize the rivalry with Iowa at the expense of bigger and far more significant objectives.
I don't think anyone said it makes or breaks the season. But I do believe it has more importance than any other single game. Obviously winning the Big XII would be vastly more important than beating Iowa, but that is spread out over many games, and you don't necessarily have to win each one.
I'm a firm believer that you need to pick up quality in state recruits, because they're the ones that really have the fire to make the team succeed. Out of state recruits can feed off of that fire. Given that Iowa only produces so many D-1 level football players, we need to pull as many away from Iowa as we can.
I don't think it is a coincidence that our football team showed the greatest improvement while Iowa was down in the last year of Hayden Fry and the first few years of Ferentz.