It's the intangibles that will make the difference in who ISU hires, I think, and then it will still be a gamble.
Michigan hired Bo Schembechler from Miami of Ohio, a couple of years later Iowa hires Frank Lauterbur, who won a boatload of games at Toledo. Both coaches went to the Big Ten from MAC schools, both were highly successful in their Mac gigs. Bo went on to coaching fame, Lauterbur's three years in Iowa City were a big-time flop.
Coaches who win lots of games aren't necessarily the final solution to what ails a program. An indicator, sure, but there's gonna have to be a lot more that goes into the ISU hire, more than we fans can know, at least at the moment.
Like recruiting the vast majority of high school football players, we won't know what we've got, coaching-wise, until several years down the road. And what confluence of events and circumstances will the next coach face in the next half decade in Ames and in the Big 12?
Maybe we should just look for the luckiest coach alive and hope he can bring his lucky stars with him.
