If You Build It, They Will Come

  The 2023 NBA draft is complete, and we have updates on the Iowa Connections available for this draft.

 For those who haven't followed my other schedules posts, I'm trying to find cards from each game played for a team.  Today that team is the Iowa State Cyclones football team.  Obviously this is a task that is not reasonable to complete as there are not going to be cards from every game, but it is still fun to see what % of games I can get to.  10%?  20%?  Who knows, but the collecting is always fun! Today I'm going to start with a bunch of Iowa State cameo cards.  A cameo card is when a player (in this case a Cyclone) is in the background of someone else's card. Also, bad run of cards for the Cyclones, all four are losses to some pretty tough competition.  

 Today I've got four cards that are not Hawkeye players directly, but cameos in the background.

 New post on Iowa schedule collecting.  A two-fer with Iowa State, and a bonus game collected!

 Collecting Iowa and Iowa State schedules are tough enough, what about a FCS school with not as many NFL players! Well, doesn't mean we can't try.  Here's the start of the Northern Iowa schedules: 2019 Panini Prizm Draft Picks David Johnson This card shows David Johnson in his away jersey at an outdoor location.  The scan here is difficult to see, but there are football players in the background that are black and gold.  This is from a game at Iowa.  DJ played two games at Iowa, in 2012 and 2014.  Luckily for us, the jersey changed between those years, and the 2014 version has a large purple patch on the sleeve, so this is from the 2012 game. 2012 at Iowa, September 15th, 16-27 loss Panther FB 2012 Update: 1 / 12 Games Hawkeye FB 2012 Update: 1 / 12 Games

  This 2007 Upper Deck Scott Chandler shows Chandler with his home uniform, and Hawk fans in the background. There is an opposing player behind him that is either a New Orleans Saint (ha!) or a Purdue Boilermaker. Chandler played for the Hawks in 2004, 05, and 06. Purdue visited Iowa in both 04 and 06.  In 2004, Chandler had 4 catches for 122 yards.  2006, he had just 2 catches for 9 yard and a touchdown.   In 2004 Purdue had linebacker Stanford Keglar, #59 ... who also played in the 2006 matchup. However, I think I figured it out.  If you watch this video of the 2004 game, you will see the moment Chandler catches the ball and is chased by Keglar. (about 1:18 mark) 2004 vs Purdue, November 6th, 23-21 victory Hawkeye FB 2004 Update: 1 / 12 Games

 I've been playing around with the open version of Chat GPT, and it strikes me that this tool is going to be super helpful and also super dangerous at the same time. Nothing you probably haven't read a million times already, but the vast amounts of knowledge that is available through that interface, and its ability to condense it and spit it back to us in a way that process information better is going to help out many people across many spectrums of work. Of course, I'm going to use it for dumb little ideas.  My favorite prompt so far has been "I want to create a board game based off the movie Die Hard With a Vengeance. Can you create set of rules for gameplay for this?".  Which it did, and with a few tweaks would be a fun game.  But, more specific to this blog, I've begun querying it for new Iowa Connections, because having thousands of collections doesn't mean I can't add a few more names. Here's the problem, Chat GPT lies to me often and with su...

 For loyal readers of this blog (really mostly myself), you know that I have a fast and loose interpretation of what qualifies as an Iowa Connection.  There are the obvious categories: Born in Iowa (i.e. Joe Burrow) Went to an Iowa College (i.e. Tyrese Haliburton) Lived in Iowa (i.e. Jim Harbaugh) Those categories are pretty impeachable.  Then there are the categories that stretch the rules a bit Coached in Iowa (i.e. Ryne Sandberg) Fictional Character from Iowa (i.e. Captain James T. Kirk) Played semi-pro ball in Iowa (i.e. Ozzie Smith) Played pro ball in a 2nd tier league like the CBA (i.e. John Starks) Played for a youth league in Iowa (i.e. Alec Bohm) Named for the state of Iowa (i.e. U.S.S. Iowa) Today I look to see if I want to stretch the rules even further.  

 Let's dig into the next four cards including one I'm unsure about. 2003 Press Pass Brad Banks has Banks in the away jersey.  Our only other clue is that there is a lot of red in the stands behind him.  The railings, padding, and fan apparel.  There is also yellow in those shirts, which could mean Iowa fans mixed in, or Iowa State.   The away games with red teams are as follows: 2001 Nov. 3 at Wisconsin 2001 Nov. 24 at Iowa State 2002 Sep. 7 at Miami (OH) 2002 Oct. 19 at Indiana I lean Iowa State on this one, but can't claim it yet. STATUS : Unknown

 I made a post recently about one of my non-Iowa collections.  It was my Minnesota Vikings Schedule collection, where I try to find a card with a photo from each game of the season.  It's probably never going to be a complete collection for reasons, but fun to collect non the less. I've been mildly working on that collection since Covid, and it took until today for me to have the most obvious of epiphanies.  "I can also collect the Iowa teams schedules!"   Probably I didn't think about this is because it is much harder to collect.  I'll use Iowa Hawkeyes Football for reference.  Each year there are about 0-4 players drafted which make up a majority of the college cards.  Each set does not use college uniforms, mostly early release sets or the SAGE types.  So the pool I have to pull from is much smaller. Who cares!  I'm going to see what I have! I'll start with Iowa Hawkeyes football, and rummage through my duplicates.  Let's se...