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.
