Teams
Forum List
Toggle sidebar

Remember The Days

dudeluv

dudeluv

Member
Mar 26, 2006
44
0
6
Sioux City Iowa
Anyone else remember the glory days of 2000 when we went 9-3 and won a bowl game? I think it was two years later that we went to the wire with FSU and started the season at 6-1, were ranked 11th in the country, only to drop 6 of our last 7 including consecutive losses to UCONN at home and Boise State in a bowl. If we could ever have 2 9 win seasons in a 3 year stretch, I think that the recruits would come, the money would definately come, and more wins would surely follow. Just not sure that this dream will ever become a reality. If it does, I'll see you there.
 
Mike Hlas of the Cedar Rapids Gazette (a EIU fishwrap) has a good column today commenting on the 2000 season and the lack of momentum or breakthrough victories we've had since that great season.... you have to have a sign-in name/subscription with the gazette so I copy and pasted the article below....


In 2000, Iowa State stormed out of the college football wilderness.
The highly entertaining Cyclones went 9-3. They earned a 37-29 Insight.com Bowl win over Pittsburgh, a team with a football reputation from a BCS conference.
After Dan McCarney endured five seasons of beatings in Ames, 2000 was a turning point. The Cyclones have been to five bowls this decade. But things never got better than they were that 2000 night in Phoenix, and aren’t all that great now.
Iowa State is at the halfway point of this season with a 33 mark, 0-2 in the Big 12. It plays at Oklahoma this Saturday, is home against Texas Tech, then has four games against North Division rivals. Right now, a 6-6 record and any old bowl might look good. Well, sort of.
Saturday night, in front of 55,338 fans and an ABC television audience, the Cyclones were back to being Nebraska’s inferiors.
Obviously, the 28-14 loss was nothing like the 73-14 and 77-14 embarrassments McCarney’s ISU squads of 1995 and 1997 endured in Lincoln. Iowa State competed Saturday night in Ames.
But Nebraska clearly was more skilled and physical than Iowa State. That wasn’t the case in 2002 and 2004 at Jack Trice Stadium when the Cyclones beat the Cornhuskers, nor was it last year in Lincoln when Iowa State took the Huskers to two overtimes. With almost the entire offense back this year, Iowa State’s attack isn’t as good as it was last year. A team that averaged 28.3 points in 2005 has sputtered in 2006.
Six games gives us a portrait of a team. Iowa State has yet to beat a I-A club of consequence, and struggled to top Toledo, UNLV and Northern Iowa. Things are backsliding.
In the North, Nebraska is on the path back to glory under Bill Callahan. Missouri is 6-0 after an impressive 38-21 win at Texas Tech. Colorado is winless, but will be good again soon enough with firstyear CU Coach Dan Hawkins.
In the South, Texas and Oklahoma probably will decide to continue football.
But where are the Cyclones headed? That’s what quicktrigger ISU Athletics Director Jamie Pollard surely is asking himself.
Pollard dropped Wayne Morgan as men’s basketball coach without flinching, although the Cyclones were far from rock-bottom. He didn’t like the chances for greatness under Morgan, and saw huge potential with Greg McDermott. Now, ISU has sold about 9,000 season-tickets though just four scholarship players stayed in Ames.
The belief in Cycloneland is that it’s brief minor pain for lots of pleasure to come.
Playing before the two biggest Trice crowds of all-time on successive Saturdays, Iowa State squeaked past UNI and got handled by Nebraska. You get no box office bounce from that.
McCarney is well-liked and appreciated. Cyclone football was lousy and dull for so long before he came to Ames.
Many happy and memorable moments followed.
But if the Cyclones don’t play winning and authoritative ball in the second half of this season, what’s Pollard to think about a future with McCarney as his coach?
This is McCarney’s 12th season, not his third or fifth.
The terrific football facilities he had so much to do with getting built are in use. He also helped get more than 30,000 season tickets sold for this season. But that needle tends to rise and drop with the performance of the onfield product. Iowa State’s football budget is still cab fare compared to Texas and Oklahoma and Nebraska, and always will be.
But 12 years into a BCS conference job, you should have other winning ingredients firmly in place.
Frank Beamer installed those at Virginia Tech. So did Bill Snyder at the former graveyard of football graveyards, Kansas State. And — sorry to mention him, Cyclone fans — so did Hayden Fry at Iowa.
It took them time to turn bad programs with then-modest budgets into national powers, but it didn’t take forever. Once they were built, they stayed strong for a long time.
For its talk of five bowls in six years, Iowa State is 38-38 against I-A teams and 21-29 in the Big 12 since 2000. It let outright berths in Big 12 championship games slip through its fingers (and toes) the last two years with Texas and Oklahoma off its schedule. It won’t win the North this year.
Worse, no one is calling Iowa State a future football giant.
If the Cyclones could draw those crowds of 55,000 for every game, that might not matter much. Heck, season tickets may be an easy sell in 2007 with Iowa, Texas and Oklahoma on the home slate.
But if Pollard’s looking bigpicture like he did with men’s basketball, McCarney’s team better snap into winning mode pretty quickly.
• Contact the writer: (319) 368-8840 or [email protected]
 
Sad. Remember when we were a good team and could hold our heads up, for like a microsecond? Yeah, I remember. Gawd, 6-6 and a possible invite to the tidy bowl. And I think that is a longshot unless something clicks for the offense. Who do we beat? KU, K-State, and CU?

KU is going to run the ball all over us. We will need to play them from a lead. Coming from behind will not be fun.

K-State ? Maybe

CU? Depends which team shows up.

Unbacceptable. The only way this could be worse is if we actually had a winning tradition. The most talent filled cyclone offense ever, squandered.
 
can't agree with that article more. McCarney brought us out of the cellar, but 12 years of mediocrity isn't gonna cut it in the big 12 especially when JP is asking for big bucks. Unless we win out, I would not be surprised to see JP do the same as he did with our bball program. that is realize mac will never get us to the next step.
 
jkoo said:
can't agree with that article more. McCarney brought us out of the cellar, but 12 years of mediocrity isn't gonna cut it in the big 12 especially when JP is asking for big bucks. Unless we win out, I would not be surprised to see JP do the same as he did with our bball program. that is realize mac will never get us to the next step.
Click to expand...

Pollard isn't going to get rid of McCarney this year. If money is such an issue and we are already paying off Morgan his contract plus paying GMac in basketball, I am sure we aren't going to get rid of Mac, especially with a $3 million buyout if he does get let go and then have to pay someone big bucks to come in here and take us to the next level(instead of pulling us back into the cesspool Mac got us out of). McCarney will be here next year with hopefully some changes in the staff.
 
[table=";width=50%"]{colsp=4}2000 – 9-3
|Opponent|Results|Opponent Final Record
|Ohio|25-15 (W)|7-4
|UNLV|37-22 (W)|??
|at Iowa|24-14 (W)|3-9
|at Baylor|31-17 (W)|2-9
|Nebraska (#2)|27-49 (L)|10-2
|at Oklahoma State|33-26 (W)|3-8
|Texas A&M|7-30 (L)|7-5
|Missouri|39-20 (W)|3-8
|at Kansas State (#19)|10-56 (L)|11-3
|at Colorado|35-27 (W)|3-8
|Kansas|38-17 (W)|4-7
|Pittsburg|37-29 (W)|7-5[/table]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Help Support Us

Become a patron
Top Bottom