Pollard question
- Thread starter jenclone
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ISU Athletics is a lot like the economy. Both go in cycles. BVD came to ISU when it was very much on the upswing (thank you, Gene Smith) and Pollard came to ISU when it was on the downswing. Both will take a while to turn around, but eventually it will happen.
I do think that Chizik set us back a couple of years, but I blame that more on Chizik and his stupid hiring decisions than I do on Pollard. How could Pollard have known? I also think that Auburn has helped to validate Pollard somewhat with their decision to hire Chizik. If he's good enough for Auburn, why wouldn't he have been good enough for ISU?
I would have agreed with this, until it came to light that Jamie gave Gene that two-year contract extension towards the end of last season...
Hiring Stoops at Oklahoma is different than hiring a big name d-coordinator at ISU. Oklahoma's name will bring in great players, ISU's will not. We need a football coach and staff that is smarter or at least as smart as the opposing staff in order to compete. That's why a hire like Brian Kelly would have made more sense, he was known as a very cerebral coach who could beat bigger programs with lesser players, and now he's enjoying great success at Cincinnatti. If Chiz has great coordinators and assistants at Auburn he may do fine (as long as he stays out of the game day decisions). I'm just not sure he's got the smarts to make great hires. I don't think he called the defenses as the co-defensive coordinator at Texas. If that's the case it should have been a red flag, and Texas didn't win that national championship with their defense, Vince Young did. I know PR has not been a head coach, but I am more optimistic about him because he is known as a very cerebral coach and has hired some very smart guys as coordinators. He also loves ISU and I'm more hopeful for our football program than I have been for many years.
How do you know we didn't offer him the shot? Jamie has never come and flat out said "I offered Brian Kelly the job and he turned it down."
If that's the case, why did Texas hire an established coach such as Mack Brown? And if it's so easy to win at Texas and Oklahoma, why Texas and Oklahoma pretty awful for a good part of the '90s (or, at least in Oklahoma's case, when first joining the Big XII)?
I think way too much is made of "well this guy had previous coaching experience versus this guy so he's obviously the better coach" - the bottom line is you just don't know how good of a fit a coach is actually going to be until he's been in the program for several years. Personally, I think the "head coaching experience" thing is completely overrated. If that were the case, South Carolina should be tearing up the SEC with Steve Spurrier as their head coach - and they clearly are not.
I don't think that you CAN judge the Chizik hire after two years. McCarney would have been a total disaster if you'd have judged him after year 2, or 3 or 4. The AD at the time said that things were moving the right way and stuck with Mac. I don't think Chizik was a bad hire, because it was too early to judge off of results. Who's to say that he wouldn't have hired Malzahn to replace McFarland and some hotshot DC to replace Bolt? We just don't know. The only thing that I could fault JP on was the fact that Chizik would have bolted after any success. But who would have thought that a school like Auburn would come calling after 5-19??
Like the poster above said, I think that FB and MBB were on the downhill slide BEFORE Pollard ever showed up. DMac's recruiting had gone in the tank and he had lost all fan confidence after multiple chokes. LE's meltdown still had an effect and WM was in the process of proving that he couldn't run a program. JP was just the one cleaning up the mess and it was a classic "it will get worse before it gets better" situation.
I wonder when the renovation to Jamie's Office is gonna start?:biglaugh:
That will be Jamie's next big accomplishment:biglaugh::biglaugh:
Well, the funny thing is, depending on whether or not his office is in the Jacobsen building, it's already started...
While it doesn't work out every time, I think having experience as opposed to no experience always gives you a better chance for success no matter what you're talking about. As a general rule I think that's the way it usually works out. That doesn't mean you can't find a good coordinator that can become a good a good head coach, but the guy doing the hiring better really know his football to separate the fools gold from the real thing. We hired the fools gold with Chiz.
I don't think that extension was ever signed. That could have been something that Jamie and Gene invented after Auburn came knocking as a way of encouraging Auburn to take Gene off our hands. I remember that their AD mentioned it in the press release announcing Chizik as the new coach.
I'm not saying that couldn't be correct StLouisClone, but I think it's a stretch. I rarely heard anything from JP that wasn't high praise for Chiz and how he was doing the groundwork for future great success at ISU, even after the horrible second year with plenty of bad coaching. If the Auburn a.d was even slightly influenced to hire Chiz based on the 2 year extension offer instead of what he saw going on from a coaching aspect on the football field, he can't be too smart, and I imagine there are a lot of Auburn fans that don't think he is.
Going to 5 bowl games in 6 years and playing in the NCAA basketball tournament before Pollard arrived is a down swing? Then what do you call what is happening now?
There should be more options. I support Pollard, but only conditionally. He hasn't shown me very much as far as his hires go. He's very good on the financial, PR and promotional end, however. If his three latest hires, football, basketball, wrestling, fall flat on their faces, knock on wood that they don't, then my support disappears.
Hey there, BVDV - is it such a slow day down there at LA Tech that you have to be checking out your former employer's fan site?
Yeah, because all AD's publicly bash their head coaches. What AD's say to the public and say behind closed doors are completely different.
First of all, BV didn't hire McCarney or Eustachy. And while each of those coaches had very successful runs while BV was athletic director, BV likely had little or nothing to do with their success. And a case could be made that he could have done more to help them sustain their success - by getting the JT expansion project off the ground or by intervening with Eustachy before the media firestorm.
The final nail in BV's coffin was his firing/hiring of Eustachy/Morgan. Anyone looking in from the outside could see that he didn't have a good handle on the situation. He made ISU look very desperate. Wayne Morgan did a good job under terrible circumstances and I wanted him to stay, but ISU basketball was very much on the downswing when BV left us in 2005.
And brand new Jamie Pollard had no choice but to fire McCarney after the dreadful 2006 season. You have to look at the circumstances JP inherited. 98% of Cyclone Nation wanted a new football coach after that season ended.
I was as big a critic of BVD as anyone - painfully poor with people, and I also believe we had such a hard time hiring a basketball coach post-LE because the candidates interviewed came away just "creeped-out" by him.
That being said, I am so sick of people saying that he could have "handled" LE better. By doing what? LE lied to him about the pics when first confronted, and if BVD had fired or suspended him prior to the media firestorm, all hell would have broken loose with fans. We would have demanded evidence, which the DM Register ultimately gave us.