This is not the worst we have ever had at Iowa State. The last years of Walden and early years of DMac were much worse. The 2003 Cyclone team was not good at all either. And the 2006-2008 football teams certainly were not definitively better than the last 2 years as well. And that is just the teams from recent memory.
All a person has to do is scan through the season records of Iowa State Football to see that we have had many, many instances of very poor teams in our history.
The four years of 1994-1997 where we won a total of 6 games during those 4 years and only averaged 1.5 wins per season is one of the worst in our history.
http://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/iowa-state/