Nancy states the obvious, again

Nancy Clark's piece on Tuesday revealed a real earth-shaking development: ISU needs to win all of its home games to be successful in '06.

Wow, that's brilliant.

The headline makes it even worse: "To save season, ISU will need 7 Ames wins". To save season? I guess the thing is already lost, then, and must be rescued.

Clark does raise one good point, and it is the one side of the McCarney tenure that has bothered me: the inability of Dan's teams to consistently beat the bad teams on its schedule. Baylor in '05 is Exhibit A.

Jump in the wayback machine:

In '05, ISU went 4-1 against teams that ended the season below .500- and sealed KSU and a$m's fate at 5-6
'04- again, 4-1, but that crushing loss to Mizzou will haunt us for years
'03- 1-2, but that team had issues outside of a tough schedule
'02- 4-1 counting 7-7 NU (win) and 6-6 UConn (loss)
'01- 5-1, but got hammered by 6-6 KSU 42-3
'00- 6-0, and the three losses in that 9-3 season were blowouts
'99- 3-1, ended the season in a loss to KU, foreshadowing season ending losses in the future
'98- 3-1, gave away a win to a bad OU team in Norman
'97- 1-3 rock bottom of the DM tenure
'96- 1-4, just couldn't stop anybody in a 2-9 year
'95- 3-2, the first season ending loss to a bad team

Looking back, ISU doesn't play enough bad teams to automatically vault them into a bowl game each year, so downing all of the bad teams should be job #1 each year. Who should be bad this year?

Going in, only UNLV and KSU are expected to struggle. ISU could certainly push CU, KU and Mizzou out of bowl eligibility come November, but we won't really be able to forecast those games until everyone gets a few games under their belt.

All I ask for is no Baylor-like losses this year. That would be something to build on, since it is hard to credibly call yourself a Championship Caliber Program with regular gaffes to losing teams.

Peterclone