The Gulf

I'm glad I could see the UTA game in person, because it really illuminated how wide the gulf is between ISU's talent and the talent at a Big Time Football School like UTA.

For example, I'm not sure where Blythe would fit into UTA's two deeps. He would play, but he would be their #3 option, their "posession reciever". He had more drops than the team in white did combined.

One of UTA's DT's chased down ISU's starting running back from behind. That's sick.

I'm sure Gene and Co. had drawn up a killer defensive scheme to stifle McCoy's passing game, and several times ISU had him in trouble. But when McCoy is two steps faster than every defender, and the UTA recievers can shake free when the play breaks down, chaos favored the talented. McCoy would either find the reciever who was all alone in the middle of the field, or behind the safety, or 5 yards past the first down marker on the sideline, or just scamper 20, 30, 50 yards, looking better than any offensive player ISU can run out there, regardless of position.

The difference in talent was that stark.

Here is where Gene will earn his salary. Either he is able to recruit to Ames the kind of athletes that haven't come to Ames in the past, or he learns how to scheme 2 and 3 star talent into nutralizing 5 star skills. Failing both will be a disaster.

I'm a big fan of what Frank Beemer did at Virginia Tech. He didn't recruit the 5 star kid at first- he recruited the kid that every HS coach wished he had 50 of. The kid that lifted the most weight, ran the most miles, worked his butt off, and had a nose for the football. That's the kind of kid ISU will need to build its program on.

I thought several times Saturday that I don't understand how a team with the talent of a Texas ever loses. How do you mess that up? Twice in a year?

UTA returns to Ames in 2012. Gene will potentially be in Year 5 of his tenure, and we can use the Texas game as perhaps the final yardstick of his program. UTA may be even better than this year (and with 2 losses already, to Horn fan they stink) but I doubt they will be any worse. ISU will be better, or Gene will be headed back to coordinator somewhere.

Peterclone