INSTANT REACTION: Jamie Pollard set to retire within the next year
- Thread starter Aiden Wyatt
- Start date
Agree with the top 5.
In the bottom 5, #2 and maybe #5 would make my rather short list.
I still don't see how anyone can ever put anything with Cael as a terrible decision much less his worst.
Cael was given a huge upgrade offer and trying to match it for a sport that is revenue negative would have been irresponsible, especially when we were even farther behind in the revenue sports and related facilities than we are today.
Also, while he has certainly had some cringe videos, how is a video from a hospital bed a bottom 5 decision?
I feel like Gene Chizik has to be on that list, especially the shortlist CW has mentioned we could have had. Also losing K.J Kindler was also a bummer seeing what she's done at Oklahoma.
Definitely somewhere on the list.
It's easy to judge in retrospect, but I didn't get it at the time, either.
How was he going to keep Cael and who cares when he announced Rogers since he was the football coach?
If JP had about $1 million in cash in his desk drawer, Cael might considered telling PedSt., “no thanks, I got the money after all.”
Just the way they constantly had to say he wasn't perfect on the podcast really annoyed me. No ****, either are you. No wonder so many internet tough guys think he was not good. Jamie was damn near perfect in his management and decision making at ISU. You know who is happy today. Fans of other big 12 schools and the slobs out east.
I'm not even sure that would have worked.
Maybe he should have kept Nebraska from leaving too.
If JP had a million in the drawer and used it to keep Cael at that point in time that would qualify as a bottom 5 decision even though most of the fanbase may not recognize it. Consider how many projects we still had to pay for at that point we did over the next several years. And probably consider that by that point JP was probably also keeping the potential of a future GMac buyout in the back of his mind as well, and we somehow lucked out of having to pay that
If you look at all the coaches that Pollard hired, the ones with the best resume it seems were the ones that did not work out. McDermott looked like a home run hire out of UNI, and has done well at Creighton just not at ISU, Prohm at Murray State had won the conference all four years he was there, he was 104 and 29, Chizek was an upcoming asst. coach out of Texas and did go on to win a national championship at Auburn. No one could say at the time that any of them was a bad hire.
The ones that turned out best were the coaches few had heard about and were still relatively unknown. Fred had never coached a game in his life before coming to ISU and was very successful, TJ. was 70 and 33 at N. Dakota and had a losing record at UNLV 29-30, ,but has been a great hire at ISU, going 124 and 53.
You just never know how they are going to turn out after you hire them.
The ones that turned out best were the coaches few had heard about and were still relatively unknown. Fred had never coached a game in his life before coming to ISU and was very successful, TJ. was 70 and 33 at N. Dakota and had a losing record at UNLV 29-30, ,but has been a great hire at ISU, going 124 and 53.
You just never know how they are going to turn out after you hire them.
Cael left because ISU was never going to have the resources that he knew he needed to compete and win championships, while Penn State did. It also got him away from Iowa and out of their shadow. How many times did he work like heck recruiting a kid and then he went to IC instead because of the success Gable had at IC. Penn State sits in a hot bed of wrestling and few if any grew up wanting to wrestle for Iowa. Since he has been there he has dominated the sport like only Gable has done before.
Never mind that Douglas was basically nudged aside so Cael would stay originally. That was about 5 months after JP started, when both the Ohio State and Iowa jobs came open at the same time -- and the plea ringing down from every corner was "Dear God, let's not have a Gable 2.0."
The Cael decision is not even remotely close to a bad decision. Wrestling is a non revenue sport, and keeping him, especially at the time, would have been a colossal mistake. Cael wanted way too much. How anyone thinks that was a bad move blows my mind. It’s actually a great decision.
