Games that "matter"

When I was in school, every day that I walked into the weight room or pulled on my jersey mattered – at least to me. I believed that how I competed mattered to the fans, my coaches, teammates, and family. No one sat in the bleachers and watched my teammates and me lift those weights or run those gassers, so it was many years before we had the chance to experience a moment of greatness in that way that someone could see – that mattered to the fans in the stands.  

Fans want to buy a ticket and see greatness displayed before them in a 60-minute masterpiece. That’s what makes sports so much fun. For the student-athlete or coach it is an all-the-time thing. For the student-athlete or coach, excellence comes from every drop of sweat shed or hour of film watched in the pursuit of attaining the ultimate goal – giving oneself the opportunity to step into that moment – the moment that matters to everyone.

I was, however, very fortunate to have been around great moments early in my ISU career -- those moments that beg the question of where one was when they happened. I’ll never forget standing at a concession stand outside a high school gym (Johnston, I think) during an AAU tournament in which my brother-in-law was playing, watching ISU beat heavily-favored Cincinnati in the NCAA tournament – a game that mattered. In 2000 and 2001, I watched our men’s and women’s basketball teams stomp their way through the Big 12 conference and into NCAA tournaments. I watched our men’s basketball team go into Kansas year after year and win on their floor. They pounded an outstanding Oklahoma squad to win the Big 12 tournament going away. I watched our run in the NCAA tournament end with a “double-foul” call – what the hell is that again? I saw the women’s basketball team’s heart and determination – not to mention incredible ability to shoot the three – lead to two conference championships and nine NCAA appearances. I remember when my team stopped Iowa cold in ’98 and when we won on the road at Oklahoma State and again at Colorado in 2000. The 2000 Insight Bowl…check, check, check, and check – they were moments that mattered to the Cyclone faithful. 

All the work that it takes building programs matters every day to student-athletes and coaches; all in athletics strive to put themselves in positions that will define them and their achievements. That said, those efforts don’t always pay off – you don’t always have the chance to be in that big game, that big moment.

Today I saw a moment of greatness at Hilton Coliseum – one that showed me that, while there is a long road to travel, the ISU women’s basketball team could be in a position to make fans’ hearts skip a beat once again come March. I am excited to have been there today, screaming my head off with the rest of the Hilton Magic-makers, and am looking forward to simply having a chance to cheer for greatness in the coming months.

PLAYOFFS?! Don't talk about PLAYOFFS!

Or do. Jim Mora’s quote is hilarious when it comes to beer commercials, but EVERYONE is talking about the big business of bowl season and whether or not there should be a playoff. Even the President-elect. I don’t have all the answers and won’t pretend to. There will always be a team left out of whatever system you choose -- whether it’s the idea of playing all the bowl games, then having the top two left standing duke it out one last time, or some sort of four/eight/sixteen team playoff. No matter what you pick, someone will always be left out. I think one thing is certain about a full-blown playoff system; it would take away what makes unique the regular season of college football, perhaps the only sporting event in America where one loss at the wrong time to the wrong team can cost you all the marbles. Tension. No matter where you stand on the issue you’ve got to love the tension of the regular season. It’s what makes the underdogs hope and the big dogs run scared. It’s what made match-ups between USC, Oregon State, Texas, OU, LSU, Georgia, Texas Tech, Okie State, Penn State, Ohio State, Alabama and Florida so compelling. It’s what made South Florida’s run so interesting last year and … I really hate to say this … thank the BCS gods, Iowa’s win over Penn State this year so important. Utah’s perfect 2008 season: incredible.

I played in the first-ever bowl win for my school…ask any ISU fan, or any other college football fan who has followed his or her team to the postseason, and some of the fan’s greatest memories are from a bowl trip. I love bowl season. While we all want to know who number one really is, there will always be some debate no matter what system is in place. I just hope whichever way the future leads the regular season and bowl payoff at the end don’t get caught in the crossfire.

One thing I haven’t heard too much discussion of in all of this is something I’m fascinated by: the bowl tie-ins. No other part or piece of the bowl equation fits in quite as strangely as the tie-in system. Most people agree parity in college football may be at an all-time high (see App. State vs. Michigan circa 2007). With increased parity comes craziness with match-ups as absurd as SEC #7 vs. C-USA’s champion.

I first became interested in how the tie-ins work when ISU was getting ready to play in the aforementioned Insight.com Bowl. What I found, while it made sense to me on some levels, definitely deserves some additional consideration when you start talking about win/loss ratios of conferences.

Which conference has the best match-ups? How about the worst? When a BCS conference gets two schools in the BCS, everyone else steps up the ladder…their opponents just got a whole lot better. When a non-BCS conference gets a school in, same thing in its match-ups. I graded conference tie-ins like grading o-linemen: “+” for a good play (in our case here, an advantageous match-up), “-” for a bad, and “0” for a tie. This won’t be perfect -- a given conference may have more or fewer teams bowl eligible than tie-ins -- and I didn’t adjust for each exact match-up this season as my curiosity sought simply the general match-up advantage/disadvantage in a given bowl season. While the detail is below, here is the cumulative summary:

ACC = 0, advantages for the upper end teams, disadvantages at the bottom of the league

Big East = +1, big advantage over the SEC, ACC and a smaller advantage on the Big 12

Big Ten = 0, slight advantage over the SEC, Big 12; disadvantage to the ACC and MAC

Big 12 = -4, slight advantage over the SEC; slight disadvantage to everyone else, big disadvantage to C-USA

C-USA = +2, big advantage over the SEC, disadvantage vs. the Sunbelt

MAC = +2, big advantage over Big Ten

Mountain West = +1, big advantage over Pac-10 in two games

Pac-10 = -1, advantage over Big 12 and ACC, disadvantages to MWC and WAC

SEC = -6, disadvantages to everyone, simply put, the hardest tie-ins of any league

WAC = +4. advantages over everyone, the easiest of the tie-ins


So how do these numbers relate to the actual conference results?

The Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC each had two BCS teams, moving everyone else up the ladder. The MWC had one, doing the same to that conference.

The Pac-10 capitalized by going a perfect 5-0, winning its match-up with the Big Ten (a yearly event); its match-up advantages over the Big 12 and ACC were accentuated by the fact it didn’t have a second BCS representative. The key win was Arizona over BYU, helping offset some of the whupping the Pac-10 took from the Mountain West in the pre-season.

There is no reason the Big East shouldn’t be 4-2 with its tie-ins and one BCS contender.

The ACC’s 10 (yes, TEN) teams went 4-6, about like their tie-ins would indicate…wins on the top half of the league, losses on the bottom.

The Big Ten continued to get worse in inter-league play, displaying miserable results (the league was 3-4 in 2006, 3-5 in 2007, and 1-6 this season), but even more disappointing than the Big Ten’s play, given their tie-ins, were the performances of the WAC at 1-4 and the MAC at 0-4.

The Big 12 and SEC have something yet to prove in the championship game. Not only do both have to look better than Utah to keep me from going temporarily insane, they have the opportunity to stake their league’s claim as the best conference in the land this year.

I can feel the tension now...

Big Ten
Rose (0) -- #1 team vs. Pac-10 #1
Capital One (0) -- #2 team vs. SEC #2
Outback (+1) -- #3 team vs. SEC #3/4/5
Alamo (+1) -- #4 team vs. Big 12 #4/5 (this year number 5 Missouri)
Champs Sports (-1) -- #5 team vs. ACC #4
Insight (0) -- #6 vs. Big 12 #6
Motor City (-1) -- #7 team vs. MAC #1

ACC
Orange (0) -- #1 team vs. at-large
Chick-fil-A (+1) -- #2 team vs. SEC #3/4/5
Gator (+1) -- #3 team vs. Big 12 #4
(-1) -- #3 team vs. Big East #2
Champs Sports (+1) -- #4 team vs. Big Ten #5
Music City (+1) -- #5 team vs. SEC #6/7/8
Meineke Car Care (-1) -- #6 team vs. Big East #3
Emerald (-1) -- #7 team vs. Pac-10 #4/5
Humanitarian (-1) -- #8 team vs. WAC #1

Big 12
Fiesta (0) --#1 team vs. at-large
Cotton (+1) -- #2 team vs. SEC #3/4/5
Holiday (-1) -- #3 team vs. Pac-10 #2
Gator (-1) -- #4 team vs. ACC #3
Alamo (-1) -- #4/5 team vs. Big Ten #4
Sun (-1) -- #4/5 team vs. Pac-10 #3
Insight (0) --#6 team vs. Big Ten #6
Independence (0) -- #7 team vs. SEC #6/7/8
Texas (-1) -- #8 team vs. C-USA #3/4

Big East
BCS (0)
Gator/Sun (+1) -- #2 team vs. ACC #3, Pac-10 #3 or Big 12 #4
Meineke Car Care (+1) -- #3 team vs. ACC #6
International (-1) -- #4 team vs. MAC #3
PapaJohns (+1) -- #5 team vs. SEC #9
St. Petersburg (-1) -- #6 team vs. C-USA #5

Pac-10
Rose (0) -- #1 team vs. Big Ten #1 (probably should be considered +1 based on recent history)
Holiday (+1) -- #2 team vs. Big 12 #3
Sun (+1) -- #3 team vs. Big 12 #5
(-1) -- #3 team vs. Big East #2
Las Vegas/Emerald (-1) -- #4 team vs. MWC #1
(+1) -- #5 team vs. ACC #7
Hawai’i (-1) -- #6 team vs. WAC #2
Poinsettia (-1) -- #7 team vs. MWC #2

Mountain West
Las Vegas (+1) -- #1 team vs. Pac-10 #4/5
Poinsettia (+1) -- #2 team vs. Pac-10 #7
Armed Forces (0) -- #3 team vs. C-USA #3
New Mexico (-1) -- #4 team vs. WAC #3

C-USA
Liberty (+1) -- #1 team vs. SEC #6/7/8
GMAC (0) -- #2 team vs. WAC or MAC #2
Armed Forces (0) -- #3 team vs. MWC #3
New Orleans (-1) -- #4 team vs. Sun Belt #1
St. Petersburg (+1) -- #5 team vs. Big East #6
Texas (+1) -- #6 team vs. Big 12 #8

MAC
Motor City (+1) -- #1 team vs. Big Ten #7
GMAC (0) -- #2 team vs. WAC or MAC #2
International (+1) -- #3 team vs. Big East #4/5
EagleBank (0) -- #4 team vs. Army or Navy (this could swing from a –1 to a +1 depending on the academy team coming into the game)

SEC
Sugar (0) -- #1 team vs. at-large
Capital One (0) -- #2 team vs. Big Ten #2
Cotton (-1) -- #3 team vs. Big 12 #2
Outback (-1) -- #4 team vs. Big Ten #3
Chick-fil-A (-1) -- #5 team vs. ACC #2
Music City (-1) -- #6 team vs. ACC #5
Liberty (-1) -- #7 team vs. C-USA #1
Papajohns.com (-1) -- #8 team vs. Big East #4/5

WAC
Humanitarian (+1) -- #1 team vs. ACC #8
New Mexico (+1) -- #2 team vs. MWC #4
Hawai’i (+1) -- #3 team vs. Pac-10 #6
Poinsettia (+1) -- #4 team vs. Pac-10 #7

Chiziked?

So I was a little conflicted when I first heard about Gene Chizik's decision to go to Auburn. Obviously, as a career move, it was a step up for him; I won't diminish him for that at all. The funny part to me was a couple of days afterward when he asked to meet with his old team once more. I wasn't in the room, but I have heard the same thing from a number of people that were. Accounts say it was a 90 second to 3 minute session where the "CEO" coach told his guys it was something he had to do for his family and that it was his dream job. By all accounts, he didn't look one person in the eye. By a number of other accounts, he didn't talk to his old staff in the time leading up to the meeting and in the time immediately after.

I'm sure Gene Chizik talked to the coaches he wanted to come with him, and to several players and recruits in the days after his meeting, but I know he didn't talk to the parents of every one of his recruits. In talking with one of those families (and not the Bofellis), all they wanted was 30 seconds....a sorry I had to go, but I had to and best of luck to your son, I know he'll do a great job. This is the same man that demanded his new players come in and meet him, one at a time, while sitting behind his desk with his national championship ring on, and demanded they sit up straight and look him in the eye.

In 2006, Gene Chizik thought he was walking into a group of people that didn't know how to work hard. Because if you work hard at Texas or Auburn, you win…and ISU didn't win in 2006. What he got was a group of kids that were tough, but not talented enough. He set about trying to bring it more talent, which he did. He put together a staff of people he could trust...as he told me when we first met... his phone had 1000's of contacts, in his words much more than the normal person, that he could rely on and that wanted to be part of his staff. He picked only the best.

I'll admit, I probably didn't give Gene a fair shake at first. I was still upset Coach Mac was gone, even though I know it was probably the best thing for everyone. If we were going to get rid of the winningest coach in school history, a man that loved the state of Iowa and its athletes, who, no question are limited in supply, we damn sure better get a staff that can coach and recruit at a whole different level. Almost immediately after the new staff came on board, I heard feedback from coaches around the state that ISU didn't care about their kids anymore and didn't think they were good enough. In fact, the 2006 4A state champions were told they didn't have a kid good enough to WALK ON at ISU. I was not comforted by this news...your heart comes from the state of Iowa. Ask Johnny Majors, Earle Bruce or Dan McCarney – they’ll tell you priority one should be getting the best kids in the state of Iowa.

After watching the 2007 Cyclones lose to Kent State, UNI and Toledo and be completely destroyed by Texas, I was fuming -- even with a win over Iowa and a come-back in a close game with an indifferent Oklahoma squad; I had seen us lose games we shouldn't have. No question the coaching in those early contests cost us as much as execution. As a coach, you need to understand what your guys can do and put them in a position to be effective. Our special teams schemes were awful. However, throughout the season, I saw improvement in fundamentals, particularly in the offensive line. Two wins at the end of the season made me think we had a chance.

2008 should have started where 2007 left off. It didn't. Too many changes in the o-line (Brandon Johnson should have been up and ready as soon as Knapp got hurt), some young guys playing that shouldn't have (Carter Bykowski- not because he couldn't contribute, but because we were loaded at the TE spot already), a Kansas game that got away - not for lack of effort on anyone's part, a Baylor game with the worst defensive game plan I have ever seen in my 13 years as a Cyclone and absolutely zero meaningful adjustments, followed by a offensive nightmare against Nebraska, left me knowing we didn't have a whole different level of coaching, in fact changes were needed. Gene Chizik was taking steps to address the problems he saw, and then Auburn stepped in.

I have always had a tremendous passion for ISU football. I watched our kids play hard all season and was truly proud of their effort. However, I spent most of the season in a funk; I was becoming indifferent to the outcome. Did I actually want the school I love to lose because of what it did to my coach, I found myself asking – no, but the only way to take what I was seeing was to not care as much as I used to. I suppose that was healthy, maybe a part of growing up, but it felt like a betrayal.

Gene Chizik might have gotten it done at ISU. He might have brought in the best and the brightest – heck, Dyron Dye was on campus for a visit. He might have gone out and gotten the best coordinators in the market at the time. He might have proved he is a military man “CEO” coach he sells himself as, but I bet if you ask a couple of his former players, coaches and recruits, they’ll tell you he proved himself to be a mercenary. They’re the ones that got the shaft in this deal. The fact that Gene Chizik could only muster at most 3 minutes for his two years’ worth of connection with a team, not answering any questions, he might as well have walked in, peed on the floor and walked out. Why waste your time with people you obviously care so little about? To satisfy his own guilty conscience is my only speculation. Gene Chizik was never connected with Iowa State, and I guess that’s why I never connected with him. Hopefully for him, he connects with Auburn or he might find himself without so many contacts in his phone.

December 20th changed everything for me. I know Coach Rhoads. Paul Rhoads is everything Gene Chizik sold himself to be – a great recruiter, a great coach and leader. Coach Rhoads will reestablish relationships with the coaches across the state – not just the ones that have kids we want right now, but ones that may have great kids in the future. It won’t be just because of that future kid, though -- it will be because he actually cares about ISU’s reputation and he respects what those coaches do for young people every day.

I’ve got to force myself to remain steady and not expect too much too quickly in terms of wins and losses, but I know I’ve got something to be proud about again. And that makes being a Cyclone worth every step of the journey.

Thank you for checking this site out. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.