Gotta disagree, we built two beautiful facilities when he was the AD the indoor practice facility and the academic center. I think he also put lights and video board in JTS and placed the name of the university on the uppedeck which looks very nice as you enter Ames. We also went to 5 bols games in 6 years and both the men and womens basketball teams were in the NCAA tournament. Left money in the reserve and ran a clean program. Sounds like a winner to me.
Before the academic center was built student athletes used Linden Dining center to meet tutors in the evenings (a total of 2 computers for all the athletes to use). When they discontinued use of Linden there was Beyer Hall, the Jacobson Building, and pretty much anywhere else they could find to meet. I remember Beyer Hall being such a mess for tutoring. When they first put in computers for student athletes to use they were old and had different (and antiquated) versions of Windows. The computers in the dorms and Durham were better. Basically if a student athlete did any work on a computer in the dorms or Durham the ones in Beyer could not read the file because the software was outdated. It was really embarrassing to show a prospective student athlete what was the academic center. I remember a track coach coming by Beyer to show them where the athletes studied. There was a leak in the roof so they took out ceiling panel and had this sheet of plastic hanging from the ceiling so the water could trickle down into a large garbage can. When the coach said "This is our academic learning facility" you can tell the prospective athlete wasn't too impressed. I have not been in the new center (I haven't tutored athletes in nearly a decade). But from what I saw on TV I can tell you that saying the academic center is a major improvement is a vast understatement.
On a final note I thought anyone replacing Gene Smith was going to have a tough act to follow. Anyone out there with thoughts about the job Gene Smith did at ISU?
