Coaching Graveyard theory.....
- Thread starter Beyerball
- Start date
He also helped Iowa State turn the corner a bit (First two Bowl Games, 8-4 in the 1971 season) and was a quality HC as evidenced by his follow-up @ Pitt and @ Tennessee. My guess is that if he would have stayed @ Iowa State for 10-15 years, the Cyclones would have been good most years, and he would have had more than 1 winning season and 2 Bowl Games. Don't forget that he laid the foundation that Earle Bruce built upon during his stay. He could have been Hayden Fry like IMO - if he would have stayed.
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It is actually a coaching graveyard for yead coaches. Chizik and his 5-19 record is the only coach that made it out for higher success. All the stuff you say about Ames. Many other college towns yave the same thing. In football we have no tradition. Its exactly what a coaching grave yard is. Coaches come here and die. Nobody has been successful long term. Earl Bruce made it out decent. Hell i think we have had only 2 or 3 head coaches with a winning record when they left. That was back in like the 1920's. Argue all you want. The facts say you are wrong.
Johnny Majors won the NC in 1976 @ Pitt and won SEC Championships @ Tennessee after he left Ames.
The biggest support that bill Snyder had was from the Univ President who...Promised Bill that Not One football player would flunk out of school.....
That's the only reason that Snyder took the job, without that promise Snyder would have passed on KState and waited for a better job.
Go back a few years in the Kansas City Star and read all about it
Rhoads Must GO
Earle Bruce had 4-7 records his first 3 seasons. We were not good. And that was with 4 non-conference games and K-State was hopelessly bad. Reality kind of destroys your myth that Johnny Majors left behind an awesome team.
I said he left a good foundation, not an awesome team. It's not a Myth that Johnny did good things at ISU. The funny thing is that in the post Majors Era - ONLY the 9-3 Team in 2000 had a better win total than Johnny's 8-4 team in 1971 (The 4 losses were to #1 NU, #2 OU, #3 CU and LSU with Bert Jones in the Sun Bowl).
Earle won 8 games in 76-7-8 stretch to match the 8 game win total - which is the best stretch in Cyclone Football in my lifetime. However, Johnny kick started the modern Era of ISU Football. No Johnny and probably no Earle - who kicked it up another notch. (I liked him too!). FWIW, Earle would have been an even better fit at ISU for 10-15 years or so IMO.
No worries though man. You apparently are not as much of a Johnny Majors fan as I am. That's okay.
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Actually I am a Johnny Majors fan. But he did not leave a juggernaut of a program. And in the last six games that Johnny Majors coached at Iowa State he was 0-5-1 and ended up with a losing record that season......and he had the incomparable George Amundson.
You point out that Johnny Majors was a damn good coach and won a NC at Pitt. That actually proves the point of how difficult it is at Iowa State. All of these very good coaches and they end up leaving ISU to finally achieve the bigger successes in their careers.
It keeps getting pointed out.......over and over......that Rhoads had some success in his early years. That must mean the guy can coach. We could have just as easily won the 2 games we have lost this season. One missed play in each would have made the difference. And you have a completely different conversation.
Bottom line is that CPR will be judged on this season after this season has played out. IMO, JP is already gathering info about the possible alternatives and options that he will consider. And that includes possible replacements for CPR. All I have been saying is that a decision will be made at the proper time. And it will consider all factors. JP probably knows as well as anyone that a possible replacement could actually be worse than replacing CPR. This team seems a lot similar to DMac's 1999 team in that they are finding ways to lose games they should win. So not sure what the future holds or what decision will be made. Bottom line is that Kansas is a definite must win.......no doubt about it. CPR's seat is getting hotter......no doubt about it.
I will say that in all likelihood that if a replacement is chosen for CPR that a lot of fans will say to themselves "WTF?? Is that the best we can do?" I say that because of the list of candidates Kansas drew and also the list of candidates we had to choose from when CPR applied for the job. Many of the hotter names in coaching see the ISU job as one of the most difficult jobs in America. And those candidates would only consider it to be a temporary stop at most. For many of those candidates the high risk is not worth it. Better off to stay in the present gig and wait for that plum job to materialize.
That is ALL fair!
BTW, I do not necessarily want CPR to be fired, UNLESS ISU makes a solid committment to hire a top notch HC with experience. I don't mean Saban or Meyer or anything like that, but a good solid MAC HC like Mizzou found in Pinkel, etc. How about the Temple HC? You think winning in Ames is tough? lol. If they are going to try the Co-ordinator route again, I would say stay the course. However, at some point the proof is in the pudding, and I do think that a QUALITY HC (Could be CPR) with TIME can succeed in Ames. ISU has had the right HC (and assistants) before, and it can be done again! Just need the RIGHT HC who wants to STAY. Perhaps CPR will one day be like Frank Beamer at VT - who had a rough go of it before it all kicked in gear?
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The airport excuse is complete bs....The reason why we can't get better talent to visit is because we suck and don't put enough players in the NFL. It has nothing to do with parents, often times parent, not able to spend $500 on a plane ticket wheras in other areas it might cost $300...complete bs.
Actually I just booked a flight from DSM to Dallas and it was a non stop flight for $185.
Actually I just booked a flight from DSM to Dallas and it was a non stop flight for $185.
$200 difference is a lot of money when you don't have money. Most of our recruits do not come from affluent families.
Just did a search on Orbitz for the weekend of our Kansas game. Friday departure and Sunday return. Non-stop roundtrip from Dallas to Des Moines would be around $665. A 1-stop would be about $300.
Reality is that weekend travel costs more. Reality is that unless you have a lot of money you are going to be on a 1-stop flight to Des Moines. And then you will have an additional short hour to travel from the DSM Airport to Ames Iowa. And also a ride back.
Two or three hundred dollars extra per ticket per person is a lot of money for a lot of people. That is why programs like Houston and others close to home have a lot of built in advantages over ISU.
I think the graveyard comment is because Iowa State is maybe the toughest job in P5 football.
1. Small local talent base
2. Shared with P5 rival with better history
3. Unlike the Hawks, we have a geographical difference with our conference peers. This plays out in negative recruiting
4. No winning tradition to sell
5. No natural landmarks and/or excitement to sell 18 year olds
6. The state of Iowa has a very small JuCo network (Iowa Western, Ellsworth and Iowa Central) to use as a feeder program.
Because of these, I don't think we will ever rise to being a conference power like Baylor has. That being said, there is no reason we can't land within the 4-7 win mark year in and year out. We need a coach who is willing to be innovative and looks for advantages wherever they can be found. We need a coach who treats the Iowa Western staff like royalty. We need a coach with energy, excitement, and appeal to recruits - be it alternate uniforms, connecting via social media, etc. And, being in a northern climate, we need someone who can get us a friggin running game.
1. Small local talent base
2. Shared with P5 rival with better history
3. Unlike the Hawks, we have a geographical difference with our conference peers. This plays out in negative recruiting
4. No winning tradition to sell
5. No natural landmarks and/or excitement to sell 18 year olds
6. The state of Iowa has a very small JuCo network (Iowa Western, Ellsworth and Iowa Central) to use as a feeder program.
Because of these, I don't think we will ever rise to being a conference power like Baylor has. That being said, there is no reason we can't land within the 4-7 win mark year in and year out. We need a coach who is willing to be innovative and looks for advantages wherever they can be found. We need a coach who treats the Iowa Western staff like royalty. We need a coach with energy, excitement, and appeal to recruits - be it alternate uniforms, connecting via social media, etc. And, being in a northern climate, we need someone who can get us a friggin running game.
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
And since him, Earle Bruce, then Chizik. More head coaching careers die here than not.
Then one way or another, our recruiting strategy is flawed. There are dozens of P5 programs out there that deal with similar travel issues to ISU, several of them we play and lose to on a yearly basis. They are figuring out a way to make it work without losing to 1AA teams multiple times or going 5-19 over a couple years. We aren't. If UNI and NDSU can come in here year after year and push us around in the trenches with midwest kids, then maybe we should be recruiting some of those kids. Improve our line play and avoid the travel problems, two birds with one stone. Maybe they wouldn't hold up with our schedule, but we would have the added benefits of increased scholarship limits, better facilities, higher pay for staff, etc.
I'm simply pointing out that some of the common excuses thrown out for the lack of success at ISU hold up when explaining why we can't hang with OU year in and year out, but I don't buy those excuses when it comes to the FCS and mid major programs we are losing to. We have more money than they do. We have better facilities than they do. We have more name recognition than they do. The deck is stacked in our favor here, and we are still losing to these schools.
We won't ever be a football power, and I'm completely okay with that. But there is no reason we can't field a competitive, .500 type team. All we need is the right coach with the right plan. If we truly believe that these are more than just excuses and they are systemic issues that absolutely can't be overcome, then it is time to quit investing all of this money into football. Put it in to hoops where we can actually compete for titles. We can become another KU, and just field a pathetic team in an empty pathetic stadium to fulfill our obligations to the conference and kill time until November.
I didn't see UNI pushing us around in our first game.
We have put a lot of money in our hoops program.
I am somewhat fearful of the backlash if Prohm does not take us to the Final Four or at least the Elite Eight. The meltdown will be horrendous.
The meltdown last year wasn't even all that bad. I couldn't possibly see how anyone would flip over not getting to final four
It was fairly bad on here after the loss. And Fred was the coach.
A new coach who isn't already a legend here? He'll get a lot of backlash if the team isn't very, very successful. Not the Final 4, but if the team doesn't finish in the top 2 of the conference and make it to the Sweet 16, Prohm will be under a lot of pressure.
