Yes they were #25 in fact. I was hunting with my dad but listening on radio.
Edit- side note my mom would tape the Cyclone replays from this time. In a rush to find tapes to use later I taped over them. I regret that so much now.
RIP Coach Jim Walden
- Thread starter BigJCy
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Yes they were #25 in fact. I was hunting with my dad but listening on radio.
Edit- side note my mom would tape the Cyclone replays from this time. In a rush to find tapes to use later I taped over them. I regret that so much now.
Duncan contributed some to the slide prior to Criner, although his period might "seem" worse than it was having to follow Bruce.
One hurdle w/ Duncan teams is it seems like it was plagued with injuries throughout the roster, some years worse than others. And he was 0-4 vs. KU (which had only one winning season among Duncan's four) and 2-2 vs. KSU (which also had only above-.500 year). Also lost to Colorado in '80, when CU was 1-10 (one of those losses was to ... Drake)
He 3-1 vs. Iowa, though.
Could probably share some blame with Duncan, who took over a good program from Bruce and did little to nothing with it.
But yes, Criner tanked things. Losing records despite having some NFL talent. Lost to Drake (!) in 1985. Pitiful performances against Iowa that kick-started the long losing streak. And of course the sanctions that handicapped Walden to start.
I dont think any one thing was to blame there was enough blame to go around.
Criner dug the hole.
University/President pushed us into the hole.
Walden covered us with dirt.
Still baffling how ISU lost to Drake that season, but somehow upset #7 Oklahoma State in the season finale. Held Thurman Thomas to 54 yards.
It was cold as **** that day, maybe that helped.
The program has bottomed out from lack of support and UNI was legitimately more talented.
Duncan doesn’t get enough credit for being the instigator for running the program into the ground. He did less with more. Plus, I think one of the guys who followed him to Oklahoma got into trouble down there.
I think it was a mixed bag of problems. We had an AD that simply didn't care enough to invest in the program what it needed, and Criner did Criner things and really put ISU in a hole, so many of Walden's complaints and excuses were valid. And perhaps had Walden coached ISU 10 years later he would have been given more leeway because he did get ISU to mediocre and would have taken ISU to some low-tier bowl games as a result, much like McCarney did... but at the same time he wasn't some savior of ISU football, either. The big difference between Walden and McCarney is while Walden was all too willing to lay the blame of his shortcomings on the university he was coaching at (and, as I said, those complaints aren't entirely wrong), McCarney instead took responsibility for his own shortcomings. For McCarney, while there was a lot of negative feelings toward him in the mid-late 2000s because he failed to meet expectations after he himself raised the bar of success (especially looking at 2005 and 2006), 20 years later he's looked at much kinder. And while time and perspective helped shift the opinion on Walden as well, I don't think he'll ever be looked at as kindly as McCarney is.
I listened to the 1990 OU game on the radio at my brother's place in DSM, and I attended the 1992 Nebraska game and the 1993 K-State game! 3 fantastic Cyclone memories.
We get it. You don't like Walden.
If he "wasnt very good", as you suggest, he wouldn't have had a winning record in his third season despite no administration support and terrible facilities. It took McCarney six years to get a winning record with much better admin support and facilities.
I really don't get the Troy Davis outrage either. It's not like running him worked any miracles for McCarney. It was a different era; freshman often didn't get that much action.
Walden had his faults. He wasn't tactful, particularly when kissing donor arse, and that was/is something that can bring a lot of grief to a program, and it did for Walden. But I don't get dogging his coaching skills. He was ok.
It does boggle my mind that he didn't take the ASU offer. Maybe he thought Jischke would put some money into football after Eaton left.
RIP Coach.
To be fair, running Troy Davis wasn't going to address the fact that the ISU defense could stop absolutely nobody - which is why Davis was twice a 2000-yard rusher for teams that barely won any games.
We had season tickets during the Walden (and Orr) era. One of our favorite annual events was Fan Appreciation Day with the football team. Coach would always take the time to talk to us as well as sign stuff for the kids which I appreciated immensely.
As you can tell, the pic is from years gone by with my son rockin' a blonde mullet. Lol
RIP Coach
As you can tell, the pic is from years gone by with my son rockin' a blonde mullet. Lol
RIP Coach
Not saying that ISU had more talent, but a quick AI search shows that ISU was spending twice as much as UNI was spending on athletics during the 1985 season. That season ISU averaged over 40,000 every game that season, while UNI averaged less than 15,000 for every game.
Talent comes from coaches finding the talent and developing it, Walden was doing a lot less of that then Murda was doing at UNI.
That artificial turf was awful. Looks like a Tennis Hard Court (which is probably softer).
Yes it was. I got permission to go on the field and do a photo essay in the 1980s and took photos of the turf of a Birds Eye view. It had heaved up on the seams at least three inches in spots and you could see the exposed concrete surface below. It was a torn ACL waiting to happen. It was like very thin carpet on cement. Awful.
Davis was a freshman and we had Calvin Branch. Its not like ISU was winning games when Davis was rushing for those numbers. Was Troy Davis as a freshman going to lead ISU to more success than he did his other 2 years? Branch was arguably the best tailback in the Big 8. Dan's first few years were just as bad as any Walden had. Absolutely nobody could have got the job done at ISU in the 80s. Bill Snyder would have failed too.
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They used to let the fans walk out of the stadium with the teams after the game, so I got to walk on that turf. It was a knee injury waiting to happen.
So didn't Dan McCarney, Rhoads, and Campbell. And they had astronomically more resources than Walden. Let's hear how you spin that one. There's no coach in ISU history who did less with more than Paul Rhoads. Ill go to my ******* grave saying that. And at least Walden's southern accent was real. CPR was a complete and total fraud. That dude was the caliber of an iowa 8man football position coach. Nobody hated seeing Matt Campbell succeed at ISU more than him.
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Paul Rhoads made the same comments. And while I agree Walden started sounding like a crybaby he wasnt lying. More than I can say for CPR.
