Messiah's Musings, Week 8

Iowa State returns home to take on rival Nebraska this weekend. In order to give Cyclone fans an inside look at the Iowa State football team, senior wide receiver Euseph Messiah will be posting a weekly blog at cyclones.com on Friday of each week throughout the football season.

Messiah has a clean slate to talk all things related to his life, academics, Cyclone football and other daily hurdles of being a Division I student-athlete.

Week 8
Hey Cyclone fans! Euseph Messiah here with the eighth edition of my weekly blog and let me tell you guys, I'm pumped for this weekend! After last week's loss to a good Baylor Bear team in Waco, Texas, we're so ready to get back on track in front of the best fans in the nation! Our focus and preparation this week is the best its been all season and we know that with the Nebraska Cornhuskers coming into Jack Trice Stadium, we have nothing but a great opportunity to get a win this Saturday.

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I can't begin to tell you how pumped we are, as a team, to go out there and play on Saturday! Losing to Baylor last week left such an incomplete feeling, that this week our current mindset couldn't be more focused and ready for this game. The great part is Nebraska and Iowa State over the past years have been competing so well against each other that it's turned into a great rivalry. Our team loves Nebraska week because they are a strong Big 12 conference opponent and always play tough against us.

Throughout our weekly routine, we have our usual 6 a.m. morning meetings and workouts, plus schoolwork to take care of. So, its easy to get into a groove of how things work every week. But something different caught our attention as we entered this week to face the Cornhuskers - the weather changed and it became colder for practice! At one point, I remember hearing that it got down to 54 degrees on our practice field, which is FREEZING when you get used to 80 degrees and above for awhile! Obviously this isn't going to affect our play on Saturday, but I just wanted to mention this because it was funny to me to watch the guys from the south, come out on Tuesday wearing many long sleeves, long socks, head sleeves and hand warmers versus the Midwest guys who came out wearing gear like it was the summer! On this team, we're pretty close and united, but for a second I forgot that not everyone is used to the weather changes. The veterans and Midwest guys are going to have to warn them that it doesn't get any better!

Even though the game is in Ames this weekend, every time I think about Nebraska, I always think about when we went down there my redshirt freshman year in 2005. The stadium in Lincoln was packed, and the year before we had won 34-27 in Ames and they were ready for revenge. I'll never forget the first time I walked on their field - there wasn't an empty seat in the stands, the crowd was so loud that if a player had their helmet on they couldn't hear anything but a blaring roar, and the environment was so crazy that it felt like the field was shaking like an earthquake!

Nonetheless, we went down there and played very well, and to this day I give my fellow wide receiver R.J. Sumrall a hard time, because midway through the game he broke a defender's tackle and had nothing but open field to score his first touchdown but was caught from behind! If you say something to him about it, he'll always reply, “... you would've got caught too!” Regardless, that has to be one of my favorite Nebraska stories because the atmosphere of the game was absolutely wild all the way to the closing seconds. And to be honest, I hope Jack Trice Stadium has the same intensity on Saturday for kickoff because nothing fuels a football player more than to feel the roar of the crowd in their home stadium!

Overall, the Cornhuskers look to be a solid team this year and Saturday should be an exciting day. Around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, I hope to see many of our fans excited and pumped as we get off the bus to enter the stadium! I know that our team feeds off of our fans excitement, so CHEER LOUD and carry that excitement through the entire game because you guys are basically our 12th man on the field! Until next time, GO CYCLONES!

- Euseph

“Faith is the foundation and key to success. Faith creates motivation which in turn leads to commitment, hard work, preparation and eventually success.”