GIE projection: dead heat, Iowa State by less than a point · Iowa State 32nd, Kansas State 42nd.
We'll end the countdown where the season ends: Farmageddon, the day before the 2026 opener, previewing its final Saturday.
Kansas State at Iowa State is a rivalry with a name, which by the rules of this series should disqualify it — the whole point has been to find games without the marquee. This one earns its spot anyway, because the model rates it a genuine dead heat, Iowa State by less than a point at home, and because it's the payoff to the Kansas State thread we started back in Week 11. The Wildcats' brutal November — a toss-up at TCU, and now a toss-up to close the regular season — runs right through this game. If you've been following the series, you already know the stakes.
The fronts are trending hard in opposite directions, too: our roster data has Kansas State up to about 294 pounds a man across the lines while Iowa State has dropped to 287, off roughly twelve year over year. In a dead heat, the bigger and growing line belongs to the visitor.
Farmageddon is the right note to finish on. It's a name readers recognize attached to a game most of them have overlooked, between two Big 12 teams the model considers interchangeable in quality. That's the sleeper formula in its final form: a rivalry hiding a coin flip. It's the last Saturday of the regular season, it's essentially 50/50, and it caps a Kansas State stretch that could define the Big 12 race.
Ten days, ten games, one for every corner of the season the marquee forgot. This is the one it saves for last.