August 23rd, 2025 / K-State Athletics
DUBLIN, Ireland – They call the Aer Lingus College Football Classic “Much More Than a Game,” and this fifth edition of the classic in Dublin, Ireland, lived up to that billing, as the 2025 college football season got underway under the lights of Aviva Stadium on Saturday. In a game that featured two ranked teams and longtime arch-rivals, No. 17 Kansas State and No. 22 Iowa State slugged it out in old-school style in the rain before the Cyclones finally outlasted the Wildcats, 24-21, to get a quick jump on the 2025 season.
The game that was announced 486 days ago and pitted the Wildcats against the Cyclones for the 109th time in the eighth-longest active uninterrupted series in FBS history carried a Big 12 feel with purple filling one side of the stadium and red filling the other.
Both teams reportedly sold 11,000 tickets, but the crowd was much larger, as the teams played before a sellout crowd of 47,221. The K-State marching band, which endured significant travel challenges to make it more than 4,000 miles for kickoff, was in midseason form at an overseas venue that served as a home game for the Wildcats and brimmed with purple furnishing, thousands of purple Powercat flags, and highlight upon highlight upon the videoboards.
In the end, though, Iowa State, 1-0 overall and 1-0 in the Big 12, made more plays to capture its third straight victory over K-State, 0-1 and 0-1 in the Big 12, in a series that dates to 1917.
Afterward, K-State head coach Chris Klieman said, “Bottom line, we’re disappointed. We came here expecting to win and didn’t win.”
K-State now has ground to make up in the Big 12 standings. It also has a home opener against North Dakota next Saturday.
“I’m proud of the guys and like I told them in the locker room, regardless of what this game was, we have 11 more left,” Klieman said with quarterback Avery Johnson and linebacker Austin Romaine sitting beside him in the postgame interview room. “If we allow it to eat us up, if we allow the outside noise to become a factor — these guys aren’t going to let it happen because they see what I see, a really good football team that got beat by a really good football team.
“We have to regroup, get some guys healthy, and get ready to go Saturday.”
From beginning to end, this game was excruciatingly close — on brand with previous clashes between these two programs. The teams have played 14 one-score games since 2008, the most in any series in the country. Each of the last four games in the series have been decided by one score.
It wasn’t until the final possession by Iowa State that this back-and-forth game reached its conclusion.
Johnson rocketed a deep ball to new wide receiver Jerand Bradley for a 65-yard catch-and-run down the Iowa State sideline, as Bradley outran three defenders for his first K-State touchdown. K-State trailed, 24-21, with 6:23 left in the fourth quarter, and still had a chance.
But Iowa State dug in and drained the clock behind a punishing second-half rushing game that gashed the Wildcats. K-State needed a stop. K-State needed the football. But K-State couldn’t get the stop it needed for its offense to gain possession. After an Iowa State timeout on fourth-and-3 at the K-State 16-yard line, Iowa State quarterback Rocco Becht completed a pass to running back Carson Hansen and let him take care of the rest, as he rumbled and twisted on a 15-yard catch-and-run to the 1-yard line just before the 2-minute timeout.
From there, the Cyclones downed the ball three times inside the 3-yard line until the game clock expired.
“The second half, our defense got lackadaisical in those small details with their run game,” Romaine said. “They ran a lot of downhill run game to us, and we have to step up. They just executed better than we did in the second half.”
After the teams slugged through the rain in the first half, the conditions proved more favorable over the final two quarters. Johnson completed 21-of-30 passes for 273 yards and two touchdowns, and Becht went 14-of-28 for 183 yards and two touchdowns. Both quarterbacks, who can run, were limited by field conditions. Becht had 12 carries for 18 yards and one touchdown, and Johnson had eight carries for 21 yards and one score.
A promising sign for K-State? It’s passing game. Jayce Brown had four catches for 78 yards and one touchdown, Bradley had three catches for 75 yards and one touchdown, tight end Garrett Oakley had five catches for 65 yards, and Jaron Tibbs had four catches for 35 yards.
Johnson’s first touchdown pass of the season was a beauty, as he pump faked and four defenders trailed Brown, who caught a pass in his gut while racing downfield, turned upfield and took a few steps into the end zone virtually clean of any contact, but surrounded by cheers as their 37-yard connection tied it at 14-14 with 14:09 left in the fourth quarter.
“When it dried up and the weather was good enough to push the ball down the field, our receiver room is so talented I don’t think those guys could cover us,” Johnson said. “We had to call the game by the conditions. We really did find some success getting some guys in man coverage so we could expose those mismatches.”
A scary moment for K-State occurred in the opening minutes, as junior running back Dylan Edwards muffed a punt and appeared to suffer an injury, which caused him to miss the remainder of the game.
As for Edwards’ status?
“I don’t know,” Klieman sand. “They told me after the first couple plays he was no longer available.”
In Edwards’ absence, running back Joe Jackson had 12 carries for 51 yards and DeVon Rice had five carries for nine yards. Brown also had two carries for 29 yards on designed wide receiver runs.
“Dylan is such an explosive player, and we had a bunch of stuff game-planned for him,” Johnson said. “When he went out, we had to have that next-man-up mentality. DeVon Rice did a great job stepping in and trying to fill Dylan’s role today, and Joe Jackson did a good job, too, and both were ready when their number was called, and that’s the type of offense we have to be.”
K-State outgained Iowa State 383 to 313. But Iowa State had a 19-13 advantage in first downs and was 3-for-3 on fourth down, whereas K-State was just 1-for-4. Iowa State had the ball for 33:52 and K-State for 26:08.
“They just made a couple plays on fourth down,” Klieman said. “A couple of them were short and they made a couple plays and we didn’t. I’d do the same thing again based on how the game was going with us struggling to slow those guys down on fourth-and-1. I thought Avery had the first down. They made the stop. I was hoping we could hold them to a field goal, they score, and we score right away again, and they did a nice job getting a drive.”
It was tough for both teams early on.
K-State’s first-half possessions resulted in a fumble, turnover on downs, a touchdown, a three-and-out punt, another three-and-out punt, and another punt to end the first half.
Iowa State had a fumble, another fumble, a punt, a touchdown, a fumble, a punt, and a missed field goal.
But Iowa State outshined K-State in the end.
“I just said we have to take accountability,” Johnson said. “As an offense, two turnover-on-downs, a fumble, and a muffed punt, that can’t be the offense that’s going to win games. You can’t turn the ball over four times and expect to win a game. Guys just have to go back, including myself, and take accountability. Where can I be better today as a quarterback and as a leader? If everybody takes that mentality going into next week, we’ll have a lot better outcome.”
The game in Dublin that was called “Much More Than a Game” appeared to be exactly that by a glance at the faces of Klieman and his players downtrodden by the season-opening loss.
It just felt like a bigger game.
“Absolutely,” Klieman said. “One hundred percent. And our guys treated it like a big game.”
Now the rest of the season awaits.