Then and now: What is the difference?
- Thread starter ruxCYtable
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I understand it! Pollard is SO good at his job. Had the honor of meeting and talking at length with him a few years back, and he's definitely glad that the President lets him do his own thing. Glad to see Leath letting that continue. ISU is really on the up-and-up in sports AND academics which does my heart good.
So are you all saying Pollard would be doing all this even if the money wasn't there? I don't think so. I would not trade him for any AD in America but I haven't read anything to convince me yet that mo' money isn't the biggest factor.
Geoffrey was probably smart enough to see a correlation between successful sports programs and donations.
I think the difference back then was a bit of a perfect storm. We were competing against unlimited resources in the old Big 8 days, (NU, CU, OU all had scholarships for more than 100 players). Then the scholarship limitations created what we see today, parity. The problem is that our admin at the time didn't want to take advantage of the parity that was being created. So, you don't get the facilities, you don't get the players, you don't get the coaches. We would've been better off being in a smaller league at the time I believe. Winning creates the support without the admin. All while the cross-state rivals hired a great head coach.
Jishke started to understand and Geoffrey got it and found the right AD for our situation. BVD was good for the bottom line, but terrible for raising funds and making good coaching decisions. Gene was great for fundraising, and hiring coaches, but not a great accountant. Now we have the AD that is great at all three major facets.
With parity and the admin that we have, I can't imagine that we will fall too far in the future. My guess is that we learned our lessons the hard way.
Jishke started to understand and Geoffrey got it and found the right AD for our situation. BVD was good for the bottom line, but terrible for raising funds and making good coaching decisions. Gene was great for fundraising, and hiring coaches, but not a great accountant. Now we have the AD that is great at all three major facets.
With parity and the admin that we have, I can't imagine that we will fall too far in the future. My guess is that we learned our lessons the hard way.
I think you could argue that Pollard is the reason ISU athletics is taking in mo' money.
It is, but without institutional support a guy like Jamie would not have come here in the first place. And other than the TV contracts, you can trace nearly every dime in new money we have to things he has done. He ruffled a TON of feathers when he got here...mostly with the rank and file in the athletic department. No longer could those people cruise in a comfy government job piling up IPERS. He demanded more effort and productivity out of them, and he held them accountable. It was sleepyville before he got here. He challenged the fan base to quit being cheap skates and pony up because that was what it was going to take to be nationally competitive. He jacked up parking prices, etc. trying to find a dime anywhere he could.
So yes, it is the money, but Jamie raised that money and did so with a supportive administration.
While administrative support is very important, the money is the thing keeping us in the game. If we didn't have money Pollard would be gone by now. ala Gene Smith, he left for greener pastures, and by greener I mean money greener, he and Martin Jischke should get at least some credit for getting ISU on the right path. Vandervelde was horrible and that started our backslide. Luckily we got Pollard, and we are back on track to where we were going in the late 90s early 00s.
Seems like under Van De Velde, we got the indoor and outdoor practice facilities, the biggest step forward for football since the new stadium. We also went to 5 straight bowls, beat Iowa 5 straight, won our only two conference regular season basketball titles and had our highest NCAA finish in basketball. All that in about 5 or 6 years. I'd take that again.
Agree on all but Mac. Now I'm not a big Mac supporter and I used to think CPR was a smarter Mac but I'm not sure anymore.
I always thought that if CPR had Mac's 2005 team, they would have went 9-3 at worst. But after 2012, I really started to doubt that...
Other than the fact we've never won in conference, just got shellacked by NDSU, and we watched what some folks said were toss-up games with OSU and WVU showing up BIG - I think we still ARE the doormat but our doormat is of a higher quality now.
Obviously not, just pointing out to some that dumping on Bruce isn't the way to try to build up JP. I've got some great memories of the teams while BVD was here, and he also won an award for national A.D. of the year, so he wasn't the buffoon some want to try to make him out to be. And as far as DMac, we went to 5 straight bowls and beat Iowa 5 straight while he was here, so I'm not going to dump on Mac either.
