Beano lives!

Imagine my surprise to see ESPN News defrost Beano Cook from the cryogenic freezer in July to talk about not just the SEC, but Barry Bonds and Penn State Women's Basketball.

Is he really so expensive to preserve that you have to get six month's work out of him to justify the cost? Did the timer on the liquid nitrogen bath kick off three weeks early? I didn't expect him until August 15th at the earliest.

Hearing Beano talk about more than Notre Dame and Michigan was refreshing, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that he had an opinion on women's basketball. If you were placing bets on which male ESPN talent would be the first to have an opinion on women's college basketball, Beano would have easily been a 500:1 shot, at the minimum.

If only I had called that British bookie yesterday.

Peterclone

Back in the 515

The long part of my summer has passed, most of it spent out of state.

It gets hot everywhere, unfortunately.

I return to the CSJ compound to discover that JP has sold skyboxes in Jack and Hilton that not only don't exist yet, but are little more than an architect's sketch.

JP must be an even better salesman and closer than any of us expected. Wow.

Now if he can convince the football team to play as if they are using B12 trophies as doorstops instead of wishing to have just one.......

Peterclone

The best money never spent

SUI named a new AD, Gary Barta, who is a friend of Jamie Pollard. JP called GB's cell and said "Welcome to the Cyclone State".

Game On.

Indeed, the money quote of the DMR article comes at the very end:

"I don't want to put up a sign," Barta said. "I just want to win. It's a Hawkeye State - I believe that sincerely, but we can't just say it, we have to do it."

Whatever it cost JP to have a graphics guy mock up a billboard, ISU has received a million in attention from it. The message has been received in Iowa City.

I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that if Iowa wins the football game in September, they won't just draw a mock-up of a billboard between Ankeny and Ames.

They will put the damn thing up.

Game On indeed.

Peterclone

Building with the small checkbook

An interesting component of the new building plan for ISU athletics: aiming at the small donor.

Check out the second-to-last paragraph of JP's Q&A at Cyclone Fanatic: If 10% of the living ISU alumni joined the National Cyclone Club at the minimum $100, the building project is paid for. A$M did that exact thing 15 years ago, and adjusted for inflation, it is an even easier sell. Most importantly, a fan that buys into the NCC has made the most important connection with Cyclone athletics, the financial. Suddenly, they can be tapped not just for tickets, but for annual donations and increases in their NCC contribution. As long as athletics is successful, the positive feedback loop continues.

Very wise, and a better long-term strategy than continually squeezing the same hundred big fish. This household will be joining the NCC- and increasing their donation to ISU academics.

Peterclone


TEXT

Relieved

When DI football returned to the 12 game schedule, I was concerned that ISU would take the K-State route and fill up the three available games (Iowa being the fourth) with I-AA or DII teams, take the big gates, write a check, and roll into league play at either 3-1 or 4-0.

Happily, there is some meat on the future schedules. (Thanks, Cyclone Fanatic) While not top sirloin, the schedules that are neither embarrassments nor suicidal.

The is a I-AA or lower game each year: UNI, South Dakota State, North Dakota State, all in Ames.

The MAC gets some games: Toledo, Kent State, Northern Illinois. Bad ISU teams can lose those games, especially on the road.

The Mountain West returns with UNLV and Air Force and Utah. Quality opponents with the potential for great games.

UConn returns to Ames. Hopefully ISU can show more heart against them in '11 than they showed in '02.

The right mix in my opinion: One sure win, one probable win, one tossup, one game with Iowa.

Nice job, folks.

While I wouldn't be opposed to building the program the way Bowden built FSU when he took over (check out who his team played in '81: 9-3 Nebraska, 9-3 Ohio State, 5-6 Notre Dame, 11-1 Pittsburgh, 3-7-1 LSU and 7-5 Florida. All on the road. The first five in a row. FSU went 3-3 on the road, 6-5 overall) I realize that belonging to a conference limits your flexibility and craziness. But a guy can dream. I guess Nebraska, Texas and OU will have to suffice.

Peterclone

Percentages

Iowa fan is rightfully crowing about the 45,000 season tickets they have sold for 2006.

Iowa fan also snickers that ISU fan celebrates selling 30,000.

Given Iowa's play the last five years, 45K shouldn't be a surprise- it should be the norm.

Given ISU slightly above average results the last five years, 30K is commendable.

A quick review: Iowa has every advantage over ISU in fan support, fawning press coverage, TV exposure, membership in a league with bottomless pockets and a very sports friendly campus. They should sell twice the number of tickets ISU does, and right now could if Kinnick could hold it. But these are exceptional times in IC.

Before KF hit his stride, sales were slipping a few thousand each year. When football fortunes turn south again- and they inevitably will, as nobody wins forever- the slide will return. Only the true hardcores will be in the stands, as the fans of winning will have moved onto something else, finding the overpriced seats with bad sight lines that required a 45 minute walk from a $10 parking place in somebody's yard not worth an entire Saturday.

At the end of the day, it comes down to simple math: A bigger percentage of the ISU fan base buys tickets, despite having a lame history of success, uninspiring game day atmosphere, and a gnawing feeling deep down in their bellies that their Cyclones will some how, some way, break their hearts.

To the Cyclone fan, I say: Bravo!

Peterclone

Sub Titles

Now that Kirk Fernentz makes more than all the ISU head coaches combined- and he should- will the Register reopen its policy of reminding readers of who is the State of Iowa's highest paid employee?

Fat chance.

It seemed that every article about LE in the Paper that Polk County Depends On featured at least one use of ".... Larry Eustachy, the State of Iowa's Highest Paid Employee......". Now a regular reader of the sports page would have a hard time knowing that little tidbit.

As I recall, LE's extra tag didn't begin with his off-court shenanigans but early in his tenure, after on-court success was rewarded with cash. Suddenly, his salary was his most important stat.

Why won't KF get the same treatment? Two thoughts: One, as long as he keeps winning, he's untouchable. If a 7-5 season or two shows up, The Tag will be the first sign that KF has lost the press. Two, he's in Iowa City. If he were in Ames, or if DMac was the one making $3M, the tag would be in full use.

What good is a double standard if you don't apply it?

Peterclone

Headline Accuracy

The Register really nailed a headline Sunday. Above an article about graduation in Iowa City:

"U of I Students Listen, Graduate".

So perfect, they used it twice.

Peterclone

Warning to caterers

If you happen to be catering one the Cylone Outings for a Cyclone Club somewhere this summer, a word of warning- you had better be on top of your game. If the entree is lousy, Jamie will have someone else bringing out the desert if you know what I mean.

Peterclone

Get out your checkbook

Two items for everyone's calendar:

1. Send $25 to every school you consider a recruiting rival of Iowa State;
2. Start buying dinner for every athletically talented kid you know that isn't interested in ISU. Take pictures. Keep your recipts.

The rest will take care of itself.

Peterclone

Outside View: GMac gets an A

Gregg Doyel of CBS Sportsline passes grades on many of the recent basketball hires.

While he uses a friendly curve (12 of 23 were given some form of A) it is an interesting read on who did well and who hasn't.

Grading the hires

Peterclone

Code Words

I hear certain descriptions being used for the Wayne Morgan era of ISU basketball:

Street Ball
Unstructured
Lazy
Unmotivated
Father Figure
Defenseless
Great recruiter, lousy coach

Some of the talk-radio types using these terms seem to be talking in code- the same code I heard about George Raveling. It's subtle, almost unconcious racism. Nobody's dropping the N Word when describing coaches or players, but its there.

When was the last time a white coach was hung with the "Great recruiter, lousy coach" label? Who was the last black coach to be a great "X and O man"?

Are either descriptions really accurate?

Peterclone

Catching up

A few things have happened since I was last able to post:

Cael Sanderson was elevated to Head Wrestling Coach aka "The Move That Had To Be Done". Like Cael's ankle pick, everyone knew it was coming, but this arrived sooner than expected. I believe Cael will be a solid coach, but he certainly has almost unreasonable expectations to meet as "The Next Gable", who ironically has come out of retirement in Iowa City.

Cael's quiet, soft spoken demeanor belies the fierce competitor inside. I don't see Cael being much of a screamer, and he certainly won't be as animated at the mat as Tom Brands or Mark Manning. But I expect he will learn exactly what to softly say to a wrestler as they head out onto the mat.

The starters dominated the backups in the spring game, as it should be.

A new feature at Cyclone Stadium has arrived: One of the brick pillars from old Clyde Williams Field has been installed at the bottom of the ramp the players use to enter Jack Trice. The last thing the players will see will be the weatherbeaten plaque that states: "Honor Before Victory". That is an appropriate motto for a program that is dismissing players for being unable to stay out of trouble (Berryman) or monitor what they ingest (Robertson). A cynic would point out that placing honor before victory has kept ISU football lousy over the years. Both are correct- and ISU should be proud to place that motto front and center.

Greg McDermott continues to look like a great hire. While half the team has weighed options outside ISU, and a couple of recruits have decided they don't fit into a more regimented scheme, others are choosing to come in. I'm not sure if a two-for-one with Iowa will be equal in the end, especially with the baggage some of the players bring with them.

Tasheed Carr, according to my source, doesn't look like a player who is transferring by the effort he is giving in workouts.

Steve Alford remains in Iowa City, his personal Elba, and he cut loose two assistants as he signed a contract extension. Odd. The new help should come cheap since, as Jim Rome joked, "they need not have experience in the second round of the NCAA's". Ouch.

My source in IC says Steve was deeply hurt by not getting an interview in Bloomington. So much for using Iowa as a stepping stone.

I'm on the road for many of the coming weeks. Set your RSS reader to pick up posts as I make them.

Peterclone

Genius

The breeze that is carrying new coaches into ISU is blowing through the marketing department, too.

I cannot recall football tickets being sold in a smarter way in the spring. Rather than focusing on selling full and split season tickets at the maximum price, Pollard and crew are doing their best to make all of the hardest to sell seats disappear first at a discount price. Jaime grasps some economics that has escaped earlier staffs.

The biggest drag on season ticket sales, after frustrating product on the field, is the ease of buying a walkup ticket. At four or five games each fall actual seats are available the day of the game, which keeps Cyclone Football an option to many fans. They can wait until Saturday morning to decide to go or not. Weather, opponent, the games on TV, the mood of the spouse, and any other variable can scrub a fan from going to the Jack when they haven't made the cash outlay. By selling those normal "walkup" tickets in April, buying anything but an SRO on Saturday will become a crap shoot, which will convince many to just commit and buy a season ticket next spring.

This could be an excellent year to be a scalper, as thousands may learn the hard way that supply has dropped, hopefully dramatically.

With the $99 end zone ticket gone, ISU is now pushing two other brilliant options: Season Hillside for $125 ($17.85 per game) and "Cy's Pack", actual seats in slow-selling sections for $150 ($21.42). An actual seat and a better view for only an extra $3.50? That should be a quick seller.

The most important thing is that come August, when people really get football on the brain, the only thing left will be full-price season and single game tickets, and hopefully a sellout for a game other than Nebraska. Get people in the habit of planning their weekends around Cyclone Football, rather than going to Ames only if it is convenient. Iowa fans view football that way, even when they sunk. Nebraska fans do, even as they have slid to merely being good. The sooner ISU fans change their thinking, the better.

The extra cash will come in handy with all the buyouts going on.

Peterclone

Shazam!

When Pollard moves, he moves! He has now hired and fired two coaches in the time it takes most schools just to form a hiring committee. Jaime has already matched the number of important hires some ADs make in a tenure.

If the new AD is anything he is decisive. He has a plan and we are headed in his direction. Whether that plan bears fruit we can only wait to see, but the man in charge certainly isn't shy about jerking the ship away from icebergs.

May Cael have the Gable touch.

Peterclone

Another new start

First of all, I think the McDermott hire was the best case scenario given the circumstances. I shake my head at the naysayers who complain that GM doesn't have "national recruiting experience". It's a chicken/egg situation. It's hard to recruit nationally at any mid-major, because you're a mid-major, and at the same time, you don't necessarily have to. UNI had three players who would have started at either ISU or Iowa this year, and all were from the Midwest. Iowa's five best players are natives.

GM will be fine, both in coaching and recruiting. He has an eye for talent, and runs a system that fits the talent he has. Most ISU fans prefer a team that may be a notch down athletically, but overachieves on the court- the opposite of what we had this past season.

The '05-06 Cyclones were much like a buddy's 60's-era British sports car: A real hoot to ride when it's tuned up up and tearing down a curvy road, but the downside is that it only performs that way about 20% of the time. The majority of the trips are frustrating slogs of misfiring pistons, a grumpy clutch and lousy acceleration.

The Morgan Cyclones were devastatingly good when focused and motivated. They could drop a 20-2 run on you at any time. But those times were few and far between, and the norm was undisciplined offense and half-assed defense, which was devastatingly bad to watch. If your scheme gives up six dunks and a dozen layups each game, you had better be filling it up on the other end Grinnell-style.

I was looking forward to the development of an all-out "40 minutes of Hell" style in Hilton, because it can be so much fun to watch. But in the end, winning at all is more fun than losing with style, so Morgan had to go. I was one of the last to admit that the inconsistency of the Cyclones should be laid at the feet of the coaches and not the players. I'm old school in thinking that a player should arrive ready to commit maximum effort towards whatever the coach draws up; that thinking has gone out of style. So it goes.

Here's hoping that a new scheme and 40 minutes of effort lead to more wins for the Cyclones.

Peterclone

Ten minutes

Wayne Morgan's tenure at Iowa State died in a ten-minute span.

Wayne was watching DSM Hoover play at the Iowa Boy's State Tournament Wednesday when his cell phone rang.

Stinson was on the line. He told Coach he was going pro. Coach was not pleased. Curtis then passed his phone to Blalock, so that Will could chime in with a "Me too".

Wayne, agitated, went to the hallway to finish the call.

Ten minutes later, again watching the game, he took another call. This one was about his non-confrence schedule. Again, he left the arena, not to return.

I saw Wayne in Hilton Thursday night. He was walking alone, slowly, looking tired. I realize now he had the body language of a defeated man, one who had accepted his fate.

This was a humane dismissal, unlike the last basketball firing at Hilton. No circus. No dueling press confrences. Nobody twisting in the wind. It's done.

Ten minutes is all it took.

Peterclone

Do Something Different

Another ISU sports blog has appeared, and it's full of intrigue, behind the scenes rumors and cloak-and-dagger speculation. It will be an entertaining read one way or another.

Cyclone Fanatic's March 1st post laments a lack of fieriness out of Coach Morgan, and then his March 6th post sites unnamed sources as being stressed out over choosing sides within athletics over the status of Morgan's program. Next year is being called "The Year" for Morgan, due to solid veterans and a solid recruiting class. But the same complaints about Wayne from Season 1 still haven't been put to bed, and they all about how perception changes depending on the number of wins and losses.

Jeremy's money quote:

"If Morgan would simply show emotion on the sideline, he would be cut more slack than any coach at any other school. ISU fans want to love their coach, but they have to be able to relate to them."

That speaks to the feelings of many that I have had conversations with. When Wayne stares out at the court after something bad happens, people don't think he's doing anything. Fans must want a coach who is screaming and yelling at the players and refs the same way they are, whether the fans are in Hilton or their living rooms. But it was exactly that kind of ranting and raving that fans loved about Tim and Larry when they were winning and hated when they were losing. Johnny Orr was beloved for such behavior, but cursed when his teams collapsed on the road. LE "shamed himself and the program" when he melted down at the end of that infamous game against Michigan State.

The same goes with football. I read multiple posts in the early Ferentz years wishing Kirk would "show some of the fire Dan shows"; now the conventional wisdom is that Kirk is "professional" and "even keeled", while Dan is a "one-trick pony who's act gets old quickly". Fans adjust their perception to fit their feelings of the program.

John Wooden was famous for going entire games and only standing for time outs. I imagine modern fans would blame the occasional Wooden UCLA loss on a "lack of emotion".

If Wayne wins 20+ games next year, the lack of emotion complaint is out the window. 15 wins and Wayne is out the window. Personally, I hope its the former.

Peterclone

Tourney Coach

Bill has done it again.

The other 11 coaches in the league have to hate seeing ISU anywhere in their bracket come tourney time: ISU owns the best winning percentage in the history of the B12 tourney. And with a 72-68 win over Texas, that percentage is now .682 (15-7).

Granted, having two titles will help the average, but c'mon! They don't have the leagues best talent, percentage wise, so 15-7 is worth saluting.

But now comes the other side of the winning percentage coin: #1 seed OU. While OU is 11-7 all-time, they carry with them the 23-3 (.885%) record of the #1 seed in the tourney. Ouch. A #9 seed like ISU has never made it past the second round. Double Ouch. But even if they lose in that second round, they will have exceeded the #9 average of .400.

Here's to being slightly above average.

Peterclone

A Win is a Win is a Win

From here on out, every win ISU can get is a good one- whether the victim has fired its coach or not. I'm not picky.

And with Stinson returning, it's never too early to play the "Next Year Starts Now" card. What the heck?

I want to be optimistic about Wayne's program because he, like Dan, seem to be genuinely decent fellows- the kind of guys you would want living next door to you. Not some slimey, smiling, looking to hop to the next job willing to pay him another $50 kind of coach.

So any wins ISU can earn, even without an NCAA bid, will help make this season less forgettable. If a nice finish can springboard into '06-07, all the better.

Now watch them get smoked in Boulder on "Everyone Is A Senior Night", and we will all be back to figuring out how much a buyout of Wayne's contract would be. We're a fickle, fickle bunch.

Peterclone