Well, now, Ames has been ranked in the top 50 small cities in the country in various media over the past few years, but don't ask me to name them off the top of my head. And our campus is one of the most attractive, from an architectural and landscape perspective, in the country. I have been to most Big Ten and Big Twelve campuses, and we measure up very well unless you want a big city atmosphere. Places like Madison and Austin come to mind, but comparing us to them is one of those apples to oranges comparisons. Climate (rough winters) and geography (no big water, no mts.) are obviously not our strong suits, but there is nothing we can do about those. I think if the coaching is good and a tradition is building, these drawbacks matter less. Coach Fenn's success is a case in point.
From BF's Twitter
- Thread starter cyclone13
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BF is really really really nice guy and I really really really appreciate everything he does for Ames community. I always have opportunity to meet him when he comes down and play against KU. He just represents Iowa State so well. If anyone has any problems with him, they can just leave Iowa State.
Being rated as a great place to live (or a great place to retire) by the AARP and other publications geared toward the retirement-age demographic doesn't exactly help sell Ames to a 15-18 year-old.
I'm not sure why it would be any harder than recruiting WBB players to and winning at Baylor or Nebraska...
Right, but it was not only AARP that ranked Ames pretty highly, although it wasn't a kids' survey either. One of the surveys, if I recall rightly, was aimed at people with families, so I gather it would be aimed at the 30-45 age group, but I cannot recall.
Right, and I bet a lot of folks would choose Boulder over any other Big 12 town, but look at their recent teams--not impressive.
It means it is hard to win here. You cannot argue it. Historically we have not won a lot in a lot of things. To do it it takes a lot of work and great coaching.
This is because of the inability to either obtain good coaches or retain the good ones - which stems from the fact we do not have a great deal of money to work with.
Yes somewhat. We also have cold weather. We are also not in a big city with great lifestyle opportunities in the city. How many very solid athletic programs are in a climate like us? Very few. It doesn't matter the reasons, what matters is it has been hard to win here and may always be.
We will just have to agree to disagree - your a half empty guy and I'm a half full guy. And there are some programs in our climate that succeed - tOSU, Penn State, Michigan, Nebraska and probably others I'm not thinking of but the major diff is they have the money and we don't.
