Coach DMac on Rivals.com homepage

[cc1091]

Wow, two seasons where ISU wasn't expected to do much, and somehow found themselves with a chance to win the B12N title, but didn't: that's what some half Cyclone fans are belly-aching about?

The long and the short of it is that almost every D1 coach has a few down years at some point if they're around very long. McCarney's only sin was that he happened to have his down years when a new Athletic Director was trying to replace all existing coaches in major sports with 'his guys'. You can see how well that worked.

McCarney was a mediocre head coach. But with a decent recruiting base, and better cash flow allowing him better assistants, I think people will be surprised at how successful he will be. I'm not familiar with the situation at NTSU, but I'd bet that it is quite a bit better than the situation that Dan McCarney walked into at ISU when he started. I won't be surprised to see him have very quick success there.

And yes, Criner really put the nail in the coffin of ISU's football future for a number of years, but Donnie Duncan got the ball rolling downhill after quite a long run of ISU improvements. Donnie however, realized that he wasn't THE guy and left before too much damage was done.

[cc1091]

Now this is what message boards are for!

Yup.. and lets give it a few more.....

[mikem]

It wasn't mac who made all of the improvements, it was Gene Smith that invested all of the initial money in the football program. Gene Smith went into debt to give a coach that admitted in a national publication that he did not understand the OT rule, a bigger head start than ANY coach ever had at Iowa State.

And to the guy who said "he didn't get us over the hump, but who could have?" It's too bad that places with lower profiles than Iowa State have hired coaches that actually won important games. SI wrote devoted a cover and huge article to K State, and called them the worst program in the history of college football. But mac had so much more to overcome?

Again, when other people talk about how bad Iowa State is, and these same people get all up in arms and mad at them, remember this nonsense. This mentality is so prevelant in this fanbase that it is scary.


Look, good for him he finally got a job, I liked the guy too. But people are making **** up about all he "accomplished" here. You don't have as big of a rebuild as Chizik, and now CPR, are having to go through if he accomplished any of the stuff people are trying to reinvent.

[Al_4_State]

I'd like to see in what % of losses under McCarney we held a 2nd half lead.

[mikem]

I'd like to see in what % of losses under McCarney we held a 2nd half lead.

Al, don't do that to yourself. I am sure that there are plenty you can just recall off the top of your head.

I think a better study would be what was the percentage of the average Iowa State fan's alcohol intake was directly a result of one of dan's many what the **** moments.....

[ozzie8]

Danny Mac took a program with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel to respectability and five bowl games, winning two of them. When DMac took over from Walden, the football program replaced K-State as the worst in the Big 8 and bottom ten, if not bottom five nationally. To take the worst FB program in the Big 8/Big 12 and later on challenge for divisional titles speaks volumes about the man's drive to succeed. Perhaps he did lose his players at the end of his tenure, but no one can discount what he accomplished at ISU with the smallest budget and some of the worst training/practice facilities in the conference. The respect DMac has in this community is well deserved.

+1. People forget how pathetic Iowa State was when Mccarney took over in Ames. He was trying to compete with D2 talent in the Big 12.

[jbhtexas]

+1. People forget how pathetic Iowa State was when Mccarney took over in Ames. He was trying to compete with D2 talent in the Big 12.

-1.

Here's a thought...if a guy has been a head coach somehwere for 12 years, and the majority of the argument for someone wishing to sing the praises of said coach rests on bashing the coach previous to the one being praised, then perhaps those praises are undeserved. 12 years is long enough for one to stand on his own body of work.

The bottom line is that the final results obtained by Walden and McCarney are very similar.

Jim Walden .335 overall .313 conference over 8 years
Dan McCarney .397 overall .284 conference over 12 years

They both started with bad teams at the bottom of the conference, and left bad teams at the bottom of the conference for the next coach. At least when McCarney took over, the team wasn't on probation with reduced scholarships.

Walden had his first winning season in year 3, and he did that with an ISU president hostile towards athletics. Unfortunately for him, back in those days, 6 wins didn't get a bowl invite.

It took McCarney six years to get his first winning season, that with an AD willing to spend on FB. If McCarney had coached during the years Walden did, it's likely he would have only gone to one bowl. DM was 22-45 for his first six years, 32-40 for the middle six years, and 34-40 for the last six years. This isn't greatness, or even goodness. It's a shade below medicority.

If you want to pump up Dan McCarney, that's fine. But don't do it by bashing the coach prior to him. McCarney was at ISU long enough to stand on his own work. Do it on his record.

[mikem]

-1.

Here's a thought...if a guy has been a head coach somehwere for 12 years, and the majority of the argument for someone wishing to sing the praises of said coach rests on bashing the coach previous to the one being praised, then perhaps those praises are undeserved. 12 years is long enough for one to stand on his own body of work.

The bottom line is that the final results obtained by Walden and McCarney are very similar.

Jim Walden .335 overall .313 conference over 8 years
Dan McCarney .397 overall .284 conference over 12 years

They both started with bad teams at the bottom of the conference, and left bad teams at the bottom of the conference for the next coach. At least when McCarney took over, the team wasn't on probation with reduced scholarships.

Walden had his first winning season in year 3, and he did that with an ISU president hostile towards athletics. Unfortunately for him, back in those days, 6 wins didn't get a bowl invite.

It took McCarney six years to get his first winning season, that with an AD willing to spend on FB. If McCarney had coached during the years Walden did, it's likely he would have only gone to one bowl. DM was 22-45 for his first six years, 32-40 for the middle six years, and 34-40 for the last six years. This isn't greatness, or even goodness. It's a shade below medicority.

If you want to pump up Dan McCarney, that's fine. But don't do it by bashing the coach prior to him. McCarney was at ISU long enough to stand on his own work. Do it on his record.

Man you have absolutely killed it in both of the mac threads. Good job.

But you really can't blame people for thinking this way, because that was ALL that mac the mediocre did the whole time he was here. He blamed Walden.

Gene Smith invested money in the football program. If you read about the past, we had Lou McCollough who understood the need to invest in football, and we won in the late 70's. Unfortunately, he was followed by Max Urick, who was the BVD of his time. They hired Criner, and we ended up on probation. Walden walked into a joke of a situation, and didn't receive 1/10 of the institutional or financial support that mac did.

Look at old video of the state of JTS when Walden had to try to recruit players to play here. Add the fact that he had no recruiting budget to begin with, and the guy gets a real unfair rap.

Then realize that BVD was hired to get the budget under control was because of all of the spending that Smith did getting the football program to 22-45.

Mac spent all of his time here making budget excuses. Well, he had more than anybody else did. When you consider that football is the main donation generator, it would seem that his repeated failures would have a lot to do with the problem.

This guy is one of the main reasons that people have the opinion of Iowa State athletics that they do. People STILL pining over a coach that was 29 games under .500 is remarkable.