Heacock Retiring

Gratefulness for ALL people he worked with, for being aware the good Lord put him in Ames, and sense of who he is as a person, communicating it consistently to those around him...I bet the players heard this from him too many times to count.

I'm grateful for being able to watch the last ten years. Go Cyclones!
 
Right time for Campbell to move on as well. Campbell at ISU post-Heacock was going to be a huge unknown. Considering the criticism the last couple years with decimated LB and DB rooms, it's pretty clear our fans really didn't fully understand what a great DC he was. Coaches around the country absolutely understood that Heacock was an ELITE DC.

This program's success has been tremendous, and they did it with garbage special teams, mediocre offense and elite defense. And there was WAY more talent in this program on the offensive side of the ball than the defense, yet that unit carried this program under Campbell. Had ISU gotten the return on talent from the other two phases that we got on defense under Heacock, this would've been a perennial top 10 team.

ISU had zero business rolling out a top 1-2 defense in a Big 12 with OU and Texas given the recruiting talent in and NFL talent out, but that's exactly what Heacock did.

Dude was an absolute wizard.
 
Below is a little graph I made of ISU's scoring offense and scoring defense rankings for the last 10 seasons. It's normalized because the number of conference teams changed over that time. 100 is the best, 0 is the worst. The X axis is year, with the number of teams in the conference in parenthesis. Taking out the first rebuilding season. Heacock had ISU at/near the top of the conference for 9 straight years. Amazing.

Congrats Coach Heacock on a very successful career!

View attachment 164247
....and to think this was done with a 3-3-5. That is part of Coach Heacock's legend-for all of college football.
 
The Professor was an absolute Legend! His defenses were often ranked the among the highest not just in the B12, but also nationally. I wish him the very best in retirement. I don't know why, but this softens the blow of all the changes. Having him retire a Cyclone means more to me than I thought it would. I hope he stays close to the program and would love for him to have a role. I look forward to him being inducted into the ISU HOF some day.

Thanks for everything, Coach!
 
I wonder how many Ped St boosters, who are already clamoring ‘too much Iowa State’, realize that the assistant coach who was by far and away the most instrumental to Campbell’s success at Iowa State is not following him to Happy Valley.
 
Not only did his defenses help Campbell win, it helped give ISU a bit of an identity during that time.

Enjoy your well-earned retirement Coach.
Serious, but ignorant question:

Is there any other example of ISU football really having an identity?

I was too young to remember anything about the Bruce era, and don’t remember anything about Duncan. Did Majors or Bruce teams have something in particular they hung their hats on?
 
Serious, but ignorant question:

Is there any other example of ISU football really having an identity?

I was too young to remember anything about the Bruce era, and don’t remember anything about Duncan. Did Majors or Bruce teams have something in particular they hung their hats on?
Bruce’s Veer run game was deadly. Second in the nation in offense one year.
 
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I wonder how many Ped St boosters, who are already clamoring ‘too much Iowa State’, realize that the assistant coach who was by far and away the most instrumental to Campbell’s success at Iowa State is not following him to Happy Valley.
None.

Fellas…I think we won the lottery on this deal.

If he retires this year, not sure we have that great of team next year. As OP pointed out, our D has been solid throughout, despite our personnel being less heralded. We won last year with walk on LB’s for crying out loud.

MC might have been stuck in Ames for all the wrong reasons.
 
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Like I said in the statue thread. Build one of Heacock, and make sure it includes shades and at least three layers of shirts, all of which are short-sleeved or sleeveless.