ISU Football & Unrealistic Expectations

[twojman]

Yes, ISU fans have unrealistic expectations. No, this is not in basketball, I am talking about football. Why you say? Well let me explain.

We are not unrealistic in the way some fanbases are. We know 12-0 is not going to happen. We are unrealistic in an opposite way.

Many of my fellow ISU fans take any little shred of hope or moral victory and extrapolate that to 'turning the corner.' I think the Athletic Department knows that and feeds that with the pathetic shirts they used to put out and also the way Pollard was talking up the first half of the OU game on today's pregame show. So many of our fans just eat this crap up.

Why do many of us do this? We have had nothing to write home about regarding football. I know this is nothing to joke about but is this like battered wife syndrome? We keep getting promises of change or that it will get better and it never does. Every year there is a new excuse whether it is injuries, young guys or kicking players off.

If so many in our fanbase continue with this belief we will never be successful. Our fans and AD staff seem to have fear mentality with every decision. There are posters here who do not want a change because because 'who would want to coach here?' Well as has been rehashed several times good coaches have WANTED to coach here. We also hear that there are too many other openings, this is also loser talk. What about our recruits leaving? Who cares, we are not exactly a highly ranked recruiting class. But our schedule is so tough. Well it is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, if we continue to suck our schedule will always be tough. Get better and magically the schedule is not as tough.

There needs to be a wholesale change within the fanbase if we ever want to win. Let's take our basketball mentality and bring it to football. Our support is great, just not demanding enough on the win side for football.

Sadly I think after today's performance Rhoads will be back next year. These moral victories are just eaten up by many in our fanbase. Many almost beat their chest with pride saying how close we were with this tough schedule. This garbage needs to stop....

 

[JohnnyFive]

I'd just be happy with bowl eligibility. It would be a start. If Rhoads can't get us there it's time for new blood.

 

[Cy$]

Yes, ISU fans have unrealistic expectations. No, this is not in basketball, I am talking about football. Why you say? Well let me explain.

We are not unrealistic in the way some fanbases are. We know 12-0 is not going to happen. We are unrealistic in an opposite way.

Many of my fellow ISU fans take any little shred of hope or moral victory and extrapolate that to 'turning the corner.' I think the Athletic Department knows that and feeds that with the pathetic shirts they used to put out and also the way Pollard was talking up the first half of the OU game on today's pregame show. So many of our fans just eat this crap up.

Why do many of us do this? We have had nothing to write home about regarding football. I know this is nothing to joke about but is this like battered wife syndrome? We keep getting promises of change or that it will get better and it never does. Every year there is a new excuse whether it is injuries, young guys or kicking players off.

If so many in our fanbase continue with this belief we will never be successful. Our fans and AD staff seem to have fear mentality with every decision. There are posters here who do not want a change because because 'who would want to coach here?' Well as has been rehashed several times good coaches have WANTED to coach here. We also hear that there are too many other openings, this is also loser talk. What about our recruits leaving? Who cares, we are not exactly a highly ranked recruiting class. But our schedule is so tough. Well it is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, if we continue to suck our schedule will always be tough. Get better and magically the schedule is not as tough.

There needs to be a wholesale change within the fanbase if we ever want to win. Let's take our basketball mentality and bring it to football. Our support is great, just not demanding enough on the win side for football.

Sadly I think after today's performance Rhoads will be back next year. These moral victories are just eaten up by many in our fanbase. Many almost beat their chest with pride saying how close we were with this tough schedule. This garbage needs to stop....

agree, hate the losers mentality some on this board possess. If Kansas St. can do it there's a coach out there who can at ISU.

insanity
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

 

[bawbie]

I don't believe there is any difference in mentality between basketball and football. Just in success. Blaming the most supportive fan base (per win) in the country is BS

 

[XD40]

If Iowa State continues to do what it has always done, it will continue to get what it has always gotten.

 

[twojman]

I don't believe there is any difference in mentality between basketball and football. Just in success. Blaming the most supportive fan base (per win) in the country is BS

I don't agree with this. ISU fans get ****** losing to KU and other top dogs in basketball (except for the McDermott era) and I love it. Our fan support is great and will help land a coach. I just see too many fans beating their chests with moral victories.

 

[Incyte]

Holy **** blaming the fans for the state of our program is beyond stupid

 

[cyrocksmypants]

TL;DR

 

[vortex]

Football is King, it dwarfs everything else, including basketball. If you have never won in football it affects the way in which other people view your entire athletic program.

 

[kilroy]

Football is King, it dwarfs everything else, including basketball. If you have never won in football it affects the way in which other people view your entire athletic program.

Unless your Duke

 

[gregniowa]

Many of my fellow ISU fans take any little shred of hope or moral victory and extrapolate that to 'turning the corner.'.

The Cyclones just came within a hair's breadth of upsetting the undefeated, 5th ranked college team in the nation, scoring 31 points on them and this team and its coaching staff is not worthy of your support? You have no rational way of assessing football teams.

Iowa State exists in a low population northern state and competes for in-state recruits with the University of Iowa (presently undefeated) and UNI (which is consistently a top team in its conference). Rhodes has no way of getting the same quality of recruits that the top teams do, but yet is fielding a team that has respectfully played through the toughest schedule in the nation - and the team is getting better every game. There is no coach in the nation that can magically cure our recruiting challenge, unless the NCAA starts allowing direct payment of recruits to join up. All you can ask is that they overachieve, which I think Rhodes has done in spades. This game showed the team can play serious football against bigger, faster and theoretically better players, exactly what is the task of any ISU coach.

Otherwise, what you are asking is for a coach to somehow woo top tier recruits to Iowa State, something that might happen once in a while, but is likely to not happen at all without a couple years of top ranking. We just almost beat the number 5 team in the nation (and for a couple of calls, we might have done so) with a team made up of leftover recruits (no offense to the players, who just showed what sort of real men they were) that have somehow been crafted and molded into a dangerous team that has the ability to beat top teams. (Perhaps not every week, but we are not in any way a sure-thing win for any team in the nation.) And that takes serious coaching to accomplish, an arguably much harder task than the coaching task of the coaches at the Top 25 schools, which have the cream of the crop of national players on their roster.

That we lost this game truly sucks, but I am so very proud of this team, (and of our coach), who fearlessly played smash mouth ball against an undefeated titan, at home, holding nothing back - and (maddeningly) came up short, a victim of some brilliantly executed single plays by our opponent down the stretch. (And a few strategic mistakes, by us in the end).

If you can't see that objective reality, you might want to pick another team to root on, as things will likely not be easy for us anytime soon. I personally, am fine with that, and if we ever get to a higher level through our over achievement, and the upper tier recruits start seriously considering Iowa State, then we will see the path to the top made possible. (K-State)

As for Rhodes, I think he is doing a fantastic job, and I am proud to have him as our coach. You will get no better outcomes through a coaching change - only discontinuity. We are the underdog in many ways and that can't be fixed simply by an attitude change on the part of anyone, fans, coaches, or administration. We have a lot working against our success in a conference of mostly top tier teams. But I would rather play the best, being in the Big 12, but lose more and allow that experience to drive our excellence, than romp around playfully in something like CUSA, with a great win/loss record, rarely playing anyone truly excellent. And that is our real option if we want to rapidly change our win/loss ratio quickly.

If all you care about is wins, (and I know some have that attitude) than there are other teams you can be a fan of that do not have the challenges ISU has before them, that you would be more likely to be happy with. Complaining about coaching when we doing things like zeroing Oklahoma and almost beating Oklahoma State with scrappy select third tier, fourth tier and ju-co recruits, is stupid. Honestly, it is amazing we can stand up to any of these teams. But we do.

The path to winning and being in the top tier of teams is a very tough one, and not one that is likely to be achieved through a coaching change alone. It will take working hard using committed lower-rated players and getting them somehow to overachieve, until we can get enough respect to get the top national recruits to start coming to play for us, instead of the @50 other teams that have a history of top ranking. And a lot of that, Rhodes is accomplishing pretty well.

Until we are considered a top-tier, our guys will be covering elites that run faster than they do (being elite sprinters), are bigger and stronger on the line (being elite linemen), and who are the hardest to tackle and cover (being elite backs) and will be picked apart sometimes by an elite quarterback. Sometimes, the mismatch at certain positions against a certain opponent will render a game next to unwinnable by any method. Welcome to reality - live with it. Those of us that recognize the growth of our team and our program don't have a losing attitude, we don't live in fantasy-land where we don't realize what it really takes to win regularly in this conference as an Iowa State. We simply realize that we are not there yet, and need to support the movement towards that end by not being fair-weather-only fans.

 

[gregniowa]

Football is King, it dwarfs everything else, including basketball. If you have never won in football it affects the way in which other people view your entire athletic program.

Football does affect it, but what does that matter to us? We can't fabricate a 50 year history of football elite performance. More specifically, basketball and football success makes recruiting easier for the other sport, and making fundraising for the sports programs in general easier, multiplying the future success potential of both programs at that school. But there are plenty of schools that are considered basketball powerhouses, and not so strong football schools.

And believe it or not, there are plenty of people that are not into football as fans, but love basketball. For them that paradigm does not work at all.

 

[CyBobby]

I guess I am an eternal pessimist re cyclone football because ISU has been Losing Football Games (that we should win), since October 1962...................

 

[chuckd4735]

My expectation in football will always be a bowl game at a minimum. Winning 2 or 3 of your non con games and 3 or 4 of your conference games is not only very achievable, it should always be the bottom line expectation.

Will you have the occasional 2010 where you fall just short, sure. However, there should be many years with 7-8 wins there as well.

I truly get sick of the " it can't be done in Ames" mentality. It's just a loser excuse for many years of bad coaching. If it can be done in Manhattan, KS, if it can be done in Iowa City, it can be done in Ames. It just takes a good coach.

 

[ExCyment]

Posters like the OP are the same idiots who make the we are Iowa State comments every time something goes wrong. David doesn't often defeat Goliath. Accepting moral victories or fan attitude is not what makes ISU David. things can change but it takes time. Our facilities are better, but are only not as far behind the teams we generally lose to, there is little local talent and we weekly play southern schools with fertile local recruiting grounds. the good news is we are clearly better than Kansas and are poised to pass KSU let's hope that starts this week

 

[madguy30]

The first half yesterday and even parts of the 2nd half showed that ISU is at times *this* close to being a decent football team, but they've done that in other games, only to also get blown out in others.

A lot of is execution like tackling and playing the ball, and a lot of it is coaches putting the players in a spot to make plays.

It's pretty obvious that ISU's personnel is meant for physical, downhill football. It took until year 7 to really start implementing that?

 

[dirtyninety]

My expectation is that our defensive backs on pass plays....especially 3rd and 15 or more....cover the recievers and put themselves in a position to make a play on the ball....sort of like they did their entire lives from nerf in the backyard at 6 years old to the day they come to Iowa State and Wally and staff coach that basic, fundamental instinct out of them. Hell, I would accept pass interferences occaisionally, but that crap we saw last night, against Texas Tech, etc....is not worthy of the money spent.

 

[Turn2]

My Iowa State education just can't compete with an Ivy League degree. This is frustrating as heck. We need to bulldoze the whole freaking campus, fire all the staff, and suddenly an Iowa Ivy League school will appear.

 

[Stormin]

Yes, ISU fans have unrealistic expectations. No, this is not in basketball, I am talking about football. Why you say? Well let me explain.

We are not unrealistic in the way some fanbases are. We know 12-0 is not going to happen. We are unrealistic in an opposite way.

Many of my fellow ISU fans take any little shred of hope or moral victory and extrapolate that to 'turning the corner.' I think the Athletic Department knows that and feeds that with the pathetic shirts they used to put out and also the way Pollard was talking up the first half of the OU game on today's pregame show. So many of our fans just eat this crap up.

Why do many of us do this? We have had nothing to write home about regarding football. I know this is nothing to joke about but is this like battered wife syndrome? We keep getting promises of change or that it will get better and it never does. Every year there is a new excuse whether it is injuries, young guys or kicking players off.

If so many in our fanbase continue with this belief we will never be successful. Our fans and AD staff seem to have fear mentality with every decision. There are posters here who do not want a change because because 'who would want to coach here?' Well as has been rehashed several times good coaches have WANTED to coach here. We also hear that there are too many other openings, this is also loser talk. What about our recruits leaving? Who cares, we are not exactly a highly ranked recruiting class. But our schedule is so tough. Well it is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, if we continue to suck our schedule will always be tough. Get better and magically the schedule is not as tough.

There needs to be a wholesale change within the fanbase if we ever want to win. Let's take our basketball mentality and bring it to football. Our support is great, just not demanding enough on the win side for football.

Sadly I think after today's performance Rhoads will be back next year. These moral victories are just eaten up by many in our fanbase. Many almost beat their chest with pride saying how close we were with this tough schedule. This garbage needs to stop....

I want success as much as anyone. IMO, things have changed in the direction since the Mangino firing and Lanning named as the starting QB. We will see if it continues.

We have a pretty good nucleus coming back for next year. Would a wholesale coaching change make us better or not for next year? Will fans turn out for the games next year?

IMO, if we fire CPR and get some assistant coach or even a head coach from some smaller school that might be similar to the Kansas Football Coach hire, then I would just as soon roll the dice for one more year with CPR. In our last 3 games we have shut out Texas, gotten beaten by the best Big 12 team at Oklahoma, and were defeated by the undefeated #5 team Okie State in a close game that we definitely had opportunities to win and had a few controversial calls go against us.

Nebraska fans are demanding more. How is it working? It is nonsense to think that you can stomp your feet and simply demand more and you will get it. THAT is the logic of an immature toddler.........and political lunatics on either side.

 

[norcalcy]

At some point the record has to matter doesn't it? I know there's all kinds of ways to spin results and see "progress", but doesn't 3-9, 2-10, and 3-7 ultimately mean something? As for ISU being in a remote place that can't attract coaches and talent, I challenge any of you to take a field trip to Pullman, WA and study Washington State University. It is in the middle of nowhere, plays second fiddle to a dominant well funded University of Washington, plays in a very tough Pac 12 conference and somehow manages to win football games. Their fan base is nowhere near as loyal as ours. In the past 20 years, they have been to two Rose Bowls, numerous lesser bowls and last night went down to LA and took out UCLA. They field a dynamic offense and a pretty salty defense. They lost their opener to a FCS team but have improved each and every week and have the WINS to show for it. In our own conference we have the K State example. If a large enough portion of our fanbase is happy with what we are getting, I am afraid we are going to get more of it. But please stop with the can't be done here stuff, it's just not true.