Williams Blog: Promotion shows program progress

By Chris Williams, CycloneFanatic.com PublisherFollow Chris on Twitter @ChrisMWilliams

AMES — Here’s a good clue that a college football program is being built the right way.

When you’re offensive coordinator leaves, you already have the people in place to promote from within and not think twice about it. That’s what went down at Iowa State when Tom Herman recently jetted for Ohio State and without flinching, Paul Rhoads promoted wide receivers coach Courtney Messingham to offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach from within.

Having the ability to do this makes life easier on not only the returning players, but the coaching staff as well.

"Even if we brought somebody else in, they were going to have to learn our system," Rhoads told CycloneFanatic.com on Thursday morning. "That’s hard on a coach. Without having to do that, to be able to speak mainly the same language to our quarterbacks as well as our offensive football team is a huge plus."

Iowa State’s young quarterbacks don’t have to learn any new terminology. They’re already familiar with Messingham. Our Austen Arnaud has stated repeatedly that when he was quarterbacking Iowa State during years one and two of the Rhoads era, Messingham was his go to guy on the sideline if he had a question considering Herman wasn’t always reachable up in the press box.

"It’s never going to work out this way entirely but you’d sure like to have the program in a position where you can continue to elevate guys like this," said Rhoads. "It means you have got the right guys and you’re doing things the right way.”

Keep checking out the site over the next week. I spoke at depth with Rhoads about some young players in the program whom he feels have the ability to make an immediate impact in 2012.