I'm just curious as to what happend to him? Did he quit coaching all together? I heard once that he stopped coaching Iowa State to sell insurance. I really hope that was just a rumor.
A question to you older fanatics: Donnie Duncan
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Was he a decent coach that just had bad luck or what? He came in after some of the best ISU football years of all time. I always listen to a lot of people complain about Criner and Walden but i never hear much about Duncan.
He was AD at OU but now I think he does something for the Big 12. Not exactly sure what he does, though. His last three years we had good starts but faltered in November.
I had also heard that he didn't put much a priority on strength and conditioning (weight training back in those days) which led to the late season fades.
he was a total disaster. complete screwed up a good program, and made our helmets look like oklahoma's ou.
Steve, I am looking at the program for the Iowa State-Iowa game in 1981. It lists Tony Cole as the strength coach. I'm not sure if FB had a separate strength coach other than him. But I think some time around then we hired a guy from Nebraska that had worked under Boyd Epley. Is that right??
No discipline. He let Crutchfield do whatever he wanted, including not come to practice, not lift weights, and walk all over him.
Then Crutchfield shows up on Saturday and carries the ball 40 times.
Then Crutchfield shows up on Saturday and carries the ball 40 times.
When they took the team photo in 1981, Crutchfield didn't have his shoulder pads on and Duncan made him walk back up to the locker room and put them on...while the entire team sat in the bleachers and waited.
Donnie (along w/ a handful of administrators, professors and Terry Branstad and Marvin Pomerantz) were all culpable for the demise of ISU football. ISU has 3-straight 8 win seasons and were widely considered the 3rd best programin the Big 8 Conf. Additionally, Earle had taken advantage of a relatively new rule and redshirted nearly his entire frosh class. The program was stacked w/ talent.
No coach in ISU history inherited more talent and did less than did Donnie.
The sad part is he is/was a very nice guy. Donnie ran a bowl game for a while and also was an associate commish for the B-12 at one time.
ISU AD Lou McCoullough wanted to hire KU assistant coach and ISU alum John Cooper. President Parks was hesitant due to the KU staff being under NCAA investigation (despite no wrongdoing by Cooper). We settled on Donnie.
While we were worried about ethics (and rightfully so) Iowa went out and hired a coach who had left two schools on probation in hopes of ending the Hawks string of 20 straight losing seasons and saving Bump Elliott's job. His name was Hayden Fry and the rest is history. With Pomerantz and Branstad determined to make ISU a satellite campus of the U of I. They went out and hired the worst president of ISU history in Gordon Eaton who hated and demphasized athletics and then broke off sources of ISU pride like giving away WOI TV and getting rid of academic programs similar what were offered in Iowa City claiming duplicate programs would be eliminated. Last I checked, Iowa still has a sub par engineering program thus making Branstad's Pomerantz words ring hollow.
Anyway, Donnie was not good
Sorry for the rant and my revisionist history
No coach in ISU history inherited more talent and did less than did Donnie.
The sad part is he is/was a very nice guy. Donnie ran a bowl game for a while and also was an associate commish for the B-12 at one time.
ISU AD Lou McCoullough wanted to hire KU assistant coach and ISU alum John Cooper. President Parks was hesitant due to the KU staff being under NCAA investigation (despite no wrongdoing by Cooper). We settled on Donnie.
While we were worried about ethics (and rightfully so) Iowa went out and hired a coach who had left two schools on probation in hopes of ending the Hawks string of 20 straight losing seasons and saving Bump Elliott's job. His name was Hayden Fry and the rest is history. With Pomerantz and Branstad determined to make ISU a satellite campus of the U of I. They went out and hired the worst president of ISU history in Gordon Eaton who hated and demphasized athletics and then broke off sources of ISU pride like giving away WOI TV and getting rid of academic programs similar what were offered in Iowa City claiming duplicate programs would be eliminated. Last I checked, Iowa still has a sub par engineering program thus making Branstad's Pomerantz words ring hollow.
Anyway, Donnie was not good
Sorry for the rant and my revisionist history
You are correct about hiring a guy who worked with Epley, but I don't remember the exact time. I think that the name was Wilson, but not sure. There is a Tim Wilson who also started at Nebraska. He worked with Majors at Pitt, with the NBA Bucks, the White Sox, UNLV, and now Oregon.
I'm thinking that our guy might have been Tom Wilson and that they might be related.
Donnie (along w/ a handful of administrators, professors and Terry Branstad and Marvin Pomerantz) were all culpable for the demise of ISU football. ISU has 3-straight 8 win seasons and were widely considered the 3rd best programin the Big 8 Conf. Additionally, Earle had taken advantage of a relatively new rule and redshirted nearly his entire frosh class. The program was stacked w/ talent.
No coach in ISU history inherited more talent and did less than did Donnie.
The sad part is he is/was a very nice guy. Donnie ran a bowl game for a while and also was an associate commish for the B-12 at one time.
ISU AD Lou McCoullough wanted to hire KU assistant coach and ISU alum John Cooper. President Parks was hesitant due to the KU staff being under NCAA investigation (despite no wrongdoing by Cooper). We settled on Donnie.
While we were worried about ethics (and rightfully so) Iowa went out and hired a coach who had left two schools on probation in hopes of ending the Hawks string of 20 straight losing seasons and saving Bump Elliott's job. His name was Hayden Fry and the rest is history. With Pomerantz and Branstad determined to make ISU a satellite campus of the U of I. They went out and hired the worst president of ISU history in Gordon Eaton who hated and demphasized athletics and then broke off sources of ISU pride like giving away WOI TV and getting rid of academic programs similar what were offered in Iowa City claiming duplicate programs would be eliminated. Last I checked, Iowa still has a sub par engineering program thus making Branstad's Pomerantz words ring hollow.
Anyway, Donnie was not good
Sorry for the rant and my revisionist history
So basically what your saying is that the administration in the 80's almost destroyed ISU Football?
It was a comedy of errors committed by a lot of different people. Earle Bruce never should have left and he's admited that after the fact. John Cooper would have been a great hire.
Ok. Now I am looking at a 1987 program (from the Iowa game) and the strength coach is Tom Wilson. Since that is Jim Waldens first year maybe he hired him away from Nebraska (since Jim had NU ties). Anyway, the thing I heard was when he got here he got rid of all the machines and only used free weights.
I was looking at Iowa's 1987 roster and they have Jeff Koeppel who is a defensive lineman from Des Moines. I bet he is Josh Koeppel's (current Hawkeye lineman) father.
yes and no. Eaton was pathetic, simply brutal.Our coaches performed poorly as well. JTS had no improvements (that I can think of) from 1974 until Gene Smith came on board. Walden lost an impact player due to some ISU red tape (he was eligible) and gave up in 1990.
It was a comedy of errors and the Pomerantz plan was executed brilliantly (along w/ four other Hawks sitting on the BOR)
I am a republican (mostly) but a Branstad election is bad for ISU and Cyclone athletics.
clearly, this is conjecture on my end.
It was a comedy of errors and the Pomerantz plan was executed brilliantly (along w/ four other Hawks sitting on the BOR)
I am a republican (mostly) but a Branstad election is bad for ISU and Cyclone athletics.
clearly, this is conjecture on my end.
Great analysis...indeed Bruce had it going at Iowa State. I believe Duncan started 5-0 and we were top 15, then lost the rest. Not too many realize how strong Iowa State had become in the late 70s under Majors and 80s with Earle Bruce. we were a top 20 program.
I think Duncan lost it right away. We lost to Pacific in the fall of 79 I think. It might have been 80 but that was the first sign that something was wrong. The teams would always start fast, knock the crap out of Iowa and then shut down after game 6. There were some ugly losses in and you never felt the team had anything left in the fourth. We did beat #8 Missou on year. My opinion, Duncan took us right back to where we were before Bruce.
