12 Months Later...

[becrisgreg]

With all the current or soon to be current Head Coaching vacancies at "name" schools, the decision Pollard made 12 months ago to allow McCarney to resign and hire Chizik looks that much better. This is not a Dan vs. Gene thing. Rather a comment on the vision and leadership Pollard has.

IF McCarney had been retained and we suffered through another year, I assume the results would have been much the same. 3-9, with swapping early season wins over Kent. St. and Toledo, with late season conference wins. With that result, McCarney would have been fired, and ISU would be searching for a coach the same time as: to just name a few -Michigan, Nebraska, A&M, UCLA, and the dominoes that will fall ie. LSU.

Whether or not all of this could have been predicted 12 months ago is debatable but also irrelevant. What is relevant, is that we have an Athletic Director that has the vision and courage to act decisively and we have our Coach. Just think if Chizik had stayed at Texas what jobs his name would be linked to on this go around of the coaching carousel.

So not only this week, but the other 51 too, I am THANKFUL, that Jamie Pollard is leading the Cyclones!

 

[frontrangeclone]

great insight bec.... JP's vision is 20/15. To go after Chizik, and in the secretive way he did was brilliant as well. And, look at wrestling.. ISU is #2 nationally and poised to challenge for a national title this spring with Cael at the helm. Hoops is looking bright (although injuries right now are putting a damper on things), and C Johnson has the v-ball program on the upswing.

 

[247cy]

With all the current or soon to be current Head Coaching vacancies at "name" schools, the decision Pollard made 12 months ago to allow McCarney to resign and hire Chizik looks that much better. This is not a Dan vs. Gene thing. Rather a comment on the vision and leadership Pollard has.

IF McCarney had been retained and we suffered through another year, I assume the results would have been much the same. 3-9, with swapping early season wins over Kent. St. and Toledo, with late season conference wins. With that result, McCarney would have been fired, and ISU would be searching for a coach the same time as: to just name a few -Michigan, Nebraska, A&M, UCLA, and the dominoes that will fall ie. LSU.

Whether or not all of this could have been predicted 12 months ago is debatable but also irrelevant. What is relevant, is that we have an Athletic Director that has the vision and courage to act decisively and we have our Coach. Just think if Chizik had stayed at Texas what jobs his name would be linked to on this go around of the coaching carousel.

So not only this week, but the other 51 too, I am THANKFUL, that Jamie Pollard is leading the Cyclones!

Mac was let go because of Jamie's visions for the "Master Plan" to upgrade the athletic facilities. Pollard has excellent long term vision for the direction of ISU athletics, and knew that if he was going to get his Master Plan rolling, the FB program needed an injection of hope and the FB fanbase needed to be united. "we feel the program has lost momentum" = "we need to unify the fanbase to increase ticket sales and maybe land some donor $, or we'll never get the Master Plan done any time in the next 10 years." Keeping Dan would have probably delayed the start of Phase 1. Hence the coaching change.

I think the timing of how JP handled the entire situation is where his brilliance really shows. By announcing Dan's resignation early, he was able to get a jump start on the competition. LSU, Alabama, Miami were all going to be looking for new head coaches last year as well. We got in front of Chizik before some of these high profile jobs became available, and I think it really helped in convincing him to come to ISU.

Pollard is definitely a 'builder' and knows how to instrument change. He's done a good job of selling his long term vision to the fans and is doing an excellent job of leading us down the path towards seeing those dreams realized. I hope that Cyclone fans continue to respond.

 

[ketelmeister]

This is a very good thread. Here's my take.
Firing McCarney was VERY difficult for JP. "The toughest thing I have ever done" is how he put it to me. The easy thing to do, would have been put off the decision. However, the fans had turned on Mac, recruiting had gone bad, season ticket sales would have been a disaster and the prospects for Mac to turn in around, (with all factors including schedule) looked impossible. If he would have waited, we would have had an empty stadium, booing fans and a program that would be hard to bring a promising coach into. In other words, we would not have had much choice of coaches, let alone one the calibur of Chizik.
Who would we be looking at?
-UNI's coach?
-NDSUs coach?
-anyone we could interest
We would be in last place waiting to choose, and it would not have been pretty. And talk of remodeling, expansion etc would have been a pipe dream and may NEVER have happened. The advantage of Iowa at home and strength of season tickets would have been all for not if a change had not been made.