Plus a note on the Oklahoma kickoff time

JaQuan Bailey was on the sidelines for an Iowa State football game for the first time in a month last week. A lower leg injury, which required surgery, robbed him of his true senior season, but the all-Big 12 defensive end will get another shot at playing in Ames in 2020.

The Hula Bowl, a college football all-star game in Hawaii, extended an invitation to Bailey early last week to play in 2020, but it appears the 6-foot-2, 251-pound pass rusher will decline and return to college as a fifth-year senior, ISU coach Matt Campbell said Monday morning.

“JaQuan’s plan is to come back,” Campbell said. “We’re going to redshirt him and then have the ability to come back for a senior year. I wouldn’t read anything into [the Hula Bowl] and to be honest it would be foreign to me of knowing exactly what that is.”

In a loss at Baylor late last month, Bailey went down in the first half with a lower leg injury and did not return to action. He was absent from the sidelines during TCU game the following week — after he had surgery — and didn’t make the trips to West Virginia or Texas Tech.

Because Bailey suffered the injury in the fourth game of the season, and hadn’t taken a redshirt in his career previously, he would be eligible to sit out the rest of the season and come back in 2020 per NCAA rules. He has 37 career starts, 113 tackles, 31.5 tackles for loss and 18.5 sacks in his career.

Campbell said the “best-case scenario” for Bailey is to rehabilitate and return in time for winter workouts in January and February, which would allow him to participate in spring practices. It would also bolster the experience on the defensive line for next season when ISU loses Ray Lima, Jamahl Johnson and Matt Leo to exhausted eligibility.

“That was the plan all along is to make sure we were able to do everything in our power to give him a full senior season of January, February, March, April, May, June, July and August to prepare for his senior year,” Campbell said. “If we can get that done I think it would be a great win for JaQuan.”

Shortly after Campbell talked about the macro-level health of his team as it heads into its second open date of the season, he focused on the micro-level, specifically as it relates to all-Big 12 safety Greg Eisworth.

Eisworth exited Saturday’s 34-27 loss to Oklahoma State midway through the first quarter after he re-aggravated a shoulder issue that has nagged him this season. Eisworth missed the West Virginia game, was limited against Texas Tech and missed the bulk of last week, but Campbell is optimistic about what the time off before a Nov. 9 trip to Oklahoma will do for him.

“This is probably the best time a bye week has ever come for a football program I’ve been a part of,” Campbell said. “A guy like Greg though for sure, he can make great strides in the consistency of his health.

“After the sixth play of that game, getting that game off and having the ability to get two full weeks under his belt of treatment and strengthening it, he’ll be in great shape for the final stretch run of things.”

ISU-OU kickoff time, TV set

ISU’s trip to Oklahoma on Nov. 9 was given a 7 p.m. kickoff and will be broadcast on FOX, the Big 12 announced Monday. It will be the first true nighttime kickoff for the Cyclones (5-3, 3-2) this season.