For those who say Walden couldn't build a program, how about his very successful years at WSU? I lived in Seattle when he was there. He used to kick UW's a**, which I loved because the UW-WSU relationship is much like ours with UI. I was thrilled when he was hired by ISU and expected great things from him. I think he took WSU to the Rose Bowl if memory serves me right. He does kind of **** me off when he comes on Jim and Jim and spends all the time talking WSU and doesn't even know what the score of the previous day's ISU game was.
I think that is the only game I remember us winning other than Ohio, etc. The 90s were PAINFUL to watch. I never missed a game while I was in school starting in 91, and the football we are seeing now is still much better quality. Every single game in the 90's was like the texas game.
Honestly, I'm done arguing about who was better, who was hated, who was loved, etc. Chizik is the coach here now and that's who I'm concerned about. I wasn't going to post on this thread at all until I saw this and I can't help but point out the misconception that this really is.
First of all, Mac had been here a while. The 2000 season was becoming a do or die situation for him. Then, if even that had been the only bowl he'd taken us to, do you think he would have lasted through 2006? This misunderstanding is part of the loser mentality that radiates around the ISU fanbase. The idea that if he'd never have taken us to bowl games that he'd still be coaching here. That somehow, the success he had is what caused him to lose his job. Honestly, what cost Mac his job was poor recruiting classes, not winning the Big XII when he had two great chances at it, a terrible record against winning teams in the big XII and most of all, it was pulling off two terrible seasons in 4 years. Not making a bowl game is one thing. And I believe his success would have kept him his job had we been close, but, mostly, 2003 and 2006 is what cost him his job.
He was a great guy and an awesome ambassador for this school. But, his losses are what cost him his job, not his wins.
Yeah, I really agree with you on this. He had a good track record, but didn't have enough support at ISU. Its hard to blame the guy for talking Wassu football though since I believe he still does the radio broadcasts for the team.
Winning 40% of your games vs. 32% of your games is not VERY close. Also, Walden only had 7 conferance games each season to deal with vs. 8 for McCarney.
Walden might have given us the greatest running back in ISU history, but he wouldn't play him his freshman year. How do we know he would have played his sophmore year if Walden had stuck around?
I don't hate Walden, but we are in better shape after McCarney than we were after Walden. McCarney at least sold hope to an extent that we were able to build better facilities. It doesn't reflect on anything that Walden did and it isn't really fair to Walden, but its just the way it is.
Also, not once during the Walden era did I ever get to complain about choking away a championship.
My dislike for Walden is that it seems he gave up on winning and recruiting by changing from an offense that threw the ball every once in a while to the wishbone. The main complaint was the wind was too strong at JTS to throw the ball, so his attitude was why bother? Let's just run it. When a team sings the fight song because they tied OSU in Stillwater at 3-3 or something like that for the final score, suddenly moral victories seemed to be embraced a bit too much.
