What do Iowa State fans feel about Chizik???

[War Eagle!!!]

http://iowastate.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=889020

This is just unbelievable to me...I really just can't comprehend this...

Finally. After two years of holding my tongue and being a good soldier – or shill as KXNO's Marty & Miller not so inaccurately said – I can put it all out there regarding what I've thought from day one about former Iowa State football coach Gene Chizik.

When Chizik was hired, I told some media colleagues in confidence that his stay at Iowa State would be three years maximum. Either he would fail miserably and be fired or he would have a little success and jump on the very first opportunity that came along to move back south. Now I must admit, even I am surprised at the bizarre turn of events whereby he failed miserably at Iowa State and still got to jump on the very first opportunity that came along to move back south. What the hell Auburn is thinking is anybody's guess. And who cares. Because it just unburdened Iowa State of its most unprepared, overmatched and incompetent head coach of the modern era.


Gene Chizik won five games in two years, making him one of the worst head coaches in ISU history.
The red flags began popping up almost immediately. When Chizik said that winning is hard everywhere - that it was hard to win at Texas and Auburn, too - you knew he had no comprehension of the task at hand. Chizik's resume is built on winning with superior players, something anybody can do. It's not hard to win at Texas or Auburn; it's hard to lose. When he was given the third-highest assistant coach salary pool in the Big 12 and immediately set about hiring his old buddies for jobs they weren't qualified for at a pay rate twice what he could have gotten them for, you knew he was playing head coach instead of actually being one. When Chizik told the players he inherited that he wasn't going to come down to their level, his legacy of all-hat-no-cattle sound bites was in motion. Few of those players had ever been part of anything as wretched as the two seasons Chizik presided over. He'd have been fortunate to have them bring him up to their level. And when he made the players spend 20 minutes of the first spring practice of 2007 precisely lining up their helmets, you wondered if a real life Captain Queeg hadn't taken over the ISU football program.

Chizik's game day performance speaks for itself and his Saturday state of confusion was boderline comical, if you subscribe to the idea that it's better to laugh than to cry. He might someday have the mental capacity to manage a game as head coach, but it's not there yet. The next opposing coach that Chizik outsmarts will be the first. Without superior athletes, he was rendered impotent as a coach and when all three phases became his ultimate responsibility, he gagged on it. Chizik coordinated defenses at Auburn and Texas; but as a head coach, all he coordinated was disarray. The Cyclone sideline resembled a fire drill more often than not in crucial situations and the number of delay of game penalties and wasted time outs that could be attributed to him and his staff was a career's worth, not two season's worth. The defense was ultimately dumbed down not so the players could understand it, but so the coaches could manage it. And even then they failed.

Would Chizik have eventually been able to win more games at Iowa State and perhaps even get to 6-6 and a bowl game? Maybe, eventually. Had he at least been stubborn enough not to quit, it was possible. After all, he had a brilliant rebuilding plan in place – get better players. Who could fail with a plan like that? But when you consider the games that his Iowa State teams choked away against very beatable opponents these last two autumns, even better players might not have mattered. Because the players he had at Iowa State were collectively good enough to go .500 or better in each of his two seasons in Ames. He and his coaching staff were the problem, not the players. Had the coaches been as good as the players, ISU would have won more games. Even if the players were horrible – say 5-19 horrible – that still means that Chizik and his staff generated a grand total of zero wins with their talent. The players, of course, were not 5-19 horrible, which means the reality is that Chizik and staff cost Iowa State victories as opposed to making them happen.

Iowa State had some good individual talent on its coaching staff. I was impressed throughout the past two seasons by coaches like Tony Petersen, Scott Fountain, Jay Rodgers and Mike Pelton. But when the CEO is swimming in confusion and the coordinators are ten years past their primes and their primes weren't all that good to begin with, there's only so much individual position coaches can do. When word came down that Petersen was losing his job in the staff reorganization, it was clear evidence to me that ability didn't carry much weight in the Cyclone football organization. Instead, clearly, it was a lot more about being part of Chizik's confederate clan than it was about coaching ability.

A two-word phrase will serve as Chizik's epitaph when it comes to his burying his dismal tenure at Iowa State: "firmly entrenched." That phrase was part of his disingenuous explanation regarding comments attributed to him by a Dallas radio show host by way of an Oklahoma State assistant coach. Now, those comments supposedly made by Chizik about being sorry he took the ISU job may have indeed been false. Or they may have been true. Whether they were ever spoken or not doesn't matter, they were definitely being thought. The truth was, Chizik couldn't have been less firmly entrenched at Iowa State. If the Chiziks even bothered to fully unpack, it would be a stunner to me. Never has someone so obviously had an eye on the exit immediately after coming through the entrance.

Chizik's decision to bolt for Auburn – while fine and good in and of itself – is obvious proof that he did regret coming to ISU and that he had quit on the job and given up on accomplishing anything in Ames. And it certainly shows that he was not firmly entrenched. Whether or not he ultimately got the Auburn job was immaterial once he had interviewed. The real story of the last two days was the Chizik was not up to the task and he knew it. As did many of us. It's nothing short of a blessing that Auburn took him off Iowa State's hands. It was quick and painless and just gives ISU a one-year head start on cleaning up the mess that Chizik created. He never hesitated to let people know how much work there was to be done and what a bad situation he stepped into. Well, the next guy will have it a lot worse, thanks entirely to Chizik. But the next guy will probably be a lot better head coach, so it's still a net gain for Iowa State.

Gene Chizik was Plan B for Iowa State. While even that was too high considering the candidates interviewed, it's at least reassuring to know that someone better than him wanted the job in 2006 and was even offered the job, but just couldn't pull the trigger fast enough to take it. ISU settled for Chizik and got what it got. Even though he was packaged and sold as a rock star, he wasn't hired as one. The rock star got away, so Iowa State took the back-up singer. It's Auburn's problem now. While he has a better chance of winning in general there – because he'll have better players – he'll be up against it in a job where so much is riding on one rivalry game a year. Beating Alabama trumps all else at Auburn and Nick Saban will probably floss with Gene Chizik on an annual basis. It's a coaching mismatch of epic proportions. I mean, if Mike Sanford and Tom Amstutz and Doug Martin hand you your lunch with inferior talent, what's Saban going to do with superior talent? When the clock ticks down to 0:00 on future Iron Bowls, there will be nothing left to do but I.D. the Auburn bodies.

Good luck, Auburn, you'll need it.

[tiger88]

I've heard ames is a complete craphole. One thing you can't do is blame chiznit for leaving.

[War Eagle!!!]

I am trying to find some sort of silver lining here but I just can't. I looked up the ISU records before Chizic was hired and they are like this:

2004 7-5
2005 7-5
2006 4-8
Now Chizik takes over
2007 3-9
2008 2-10

He made a bad team worse...I just keep asking myself...what. the. fuck?

[Snaggletiger]

I stopped reading after 3 paragraphs.  That's too depressing to finish.  I have to go take another Chizik.

[Pell City Tiger]

How many of these guys will he bring to Auburn?

http://www.cyclones.com/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=10700&KEY=&SPID=4653&SPSID=48392

[War Eagle!!!]

How many of these guys will he bring to Auburn?

http://www.cyclones.com/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=10700&KEY=&SPID=4653&SPSID=48392

I had no idea Wayne Bolt coached with Chizik. He is a pretty damn good coach. He coached OL when I played at Troy...he was like 450 pounds then though. It looks like he has lost some weight...

[Snaggletiger]

Pelton. 

[Iwannaplay]

The thing that makes me worried for you guys is the I-State fans complaining about his lack of organization.  That is really the HC's only job.  Oh and he won't bring Bolt with him probably considering that he just demoted him from DC. 

But I encourage you all to become TROY fans now until JJ is fired. 

[AUChizad]

http://gazetteonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081213/SPORTS/712139905/1008

Gene: Don't let door hit you on way out of Ames
By Mike Hlas
Gazette sports columnist
mike.hlas@gazettecommunications.com

CEDAR FALLS — Gene Chizik touched down in Ames two Decembers ago touting his deep religious faith and his excitement to begin his head coaching career at Iowa State.

After emerging from an inflatable Cyclones "helmet" filled with smoke, Chizik got all humble and said "I couldn't be more pleased that Iowa State University is the institution providing me this opportunity."

That helmet wasn't the only thing billowing smoke.

No thanks will be returned Chizik's way from central Iowa. The carpetbagger did nothing for Cyclone football but set it back from whence he inherited it.

Dan McCarney can't be faulted if he takes a moment from his recruiting and coaching duties at the University of Florida for a moment to ruefully snicker. He was a far better guy for Cyclone football than his successor, in performance and attitude.

McCarney may be getting fitted for a national-title ring in a month as Urban Meyer's defensive line coach. Iowa State Athletics Director Jamie Pollard, meanwhile, has a face covered with egg.

Pollard has often said he wanted to have coaches other schools would try to steal from him. But who would have dreamed it would be a coach with a 10-game losing streak?

Is there a psalm or prayer for firing two assistants and demoting two coordinators before throwing your entire staff, your AD, and your employer under the bus? What about all those players you brought to ISU or kept there under a promise you'd build something together?

Then again, when you get an opportunity that no one in America but Auburn AD Jay Jacobs can understand, maybe you're just doing the only logical thing. You're saying yes to a miracle.

The big three U.S. automakers would be lucky to get such a bailout.

Granted, Chizik built a reputation at Auburn from 2002 to 2004 when he was defensive coordinator on Tommy Tuberville's staff, was the national Assistant Coach of the Year in '04 when the Tigers went 13-0, and was co-defensive coordinator at Texas when the Longhorns went unbeaten in 2005.

That was the stuff that got him hired at Iowa State before another BCS conference program could hire him.

But his second-year defense at Iowa State was atrocious, his team seemed to have no grasp of how to win the rare Big 12 games that were within reach, his squad didn't look especially well-coached, and his recent firings and demotions of coaches were an admission he did a poor job of assembling a staff.

You put this guy in charge of an SEC program that ran off Tuberville, who was 52-30 in the SEC over 10 years at Auburn? This is the guy who will launch a challenge to Alabama monarch Nick Saban. This guy will push Auburn past SEC heavyweights like Urban Meyer, Les Miles and Mark Richt? This guy went 0-8 in the Big 12 this year and didn't play Oklahoma, Texas or Texas Tech!

So instead of staying the course and fighting the good fight for the school that gave him the chance he could spin straw into gold, or at least a better grade of straw, Chizik bolted for a sucker willing to give him a bigger program for his on-the-job training as a head coach.

Iowa State's a football bus stop, he's telling the world. You can't win there, he's saying. Because if you could, well, of course he would have.

Or maybe, as others have suggested, it helps to have been a touted assistant coach when you worked with the kind of talent Auburn and Texas could provide you.

Where would ISU football be today had Pollard chosen Brian Kelly instead of Chizik? Who knows, but wouldn't Clonedom love to have found out?

Kelly had shown he was equipped to be a head coach at Division II power Grand Valley State and Central Michigan. He left programs better than he found them and is now taking 11-2 Cincinnati to the Orange Bowl.

Kelly was nothing more than a decoy for Pollard, who thought he snookered the media and wowed all of college sports when landed touted up-and-comer Chizik. A lot of kudos came Pollard's way after the hire. A lot of us bought into the hype. Meanwhile, Cincinnati thanks Iowa State.

Pollard is lucky to get another chance. ISU football could have slogged along under Chizik as ticket sales eroded. Now he can go for one more burst of enthusiasm. If he chooses wisely, that is.

He's lucky to get another chance. It's an early Christmas present for him, although he should be thoroughly embarrassed today.

"The timing and the way it played out has been hurtful and disappointing," Pollard said in a statement Saturday.

Get over it fast, Jamie. Hire a football coach who knows how to run a program, pick a good staff, treat players right, and put together sharp game plans. In a word, upgrade.

It's a highly disputed position in Iowa and beyond these days, but I maintain you can win at Iowa State. McCarney did for a while, and even underachieved a bit as he was doing so. Two trips to Big 12 title games slipped out of the palm of his hand.

But ISU was at a nice level in this very decade with five seasons of seven or more wins and five bowl trips in a six-year stretch.

Hey, if Ball State's Brady Hoke is a finalist at football graveyard San Diego State, ISU can again attract candidates of Kelly's ilk this time around.

There's Turner Gill at Buffalo, there's Tulsa's Todd Graham, there's Hoke. There's Northern Iowa's Mark Farley, who clearly knows how to develop talent and build a winning atmosphere. Farley runs the state's No. 2 football team.

At least the next Cyclones coach will start with one advantage. He'll have an easy act to follow.

[AuburnChopper 3.0]

Guys, I lived in Des Moines, IA all through HS...  I'm telling you, you have no idea how idiotic and whiney ISU nation is.  They are worse than "little brothers" to Iowa, they're baby brothers.  It's terrible there if you support ISU football.   

I'm not sure I'm going to bail on Chizik because of ISU just yet.   I'm not excited about anything, but just being very knowledgeable about Ames, IA and that campus and fans, I can't pass judgement yet.

Let's put it this way.  Northern Iowa, a IAA team that beat ISU last year is actually a BIGGER, much more respected program than ISU is from the Big 12. 

I'm in the wait and see status at this point... 

Fuck JJ, Lowder and Gogue though for the completely underwhelming fuck up of a search and interview process they presented the Auburn family however.

[Razorhawk]

Guys, I lived in Des Moines, IA all through HS...  I'm telling you, you have no idea how idiotic and whiney ISU nation is.  They are worse than "little brothers" to Iowa, they're baby brothers.  It's terrible there if you support ISU football.   

I'm not sure I'm going to bail on Chizik because of ISU just yet.   I'm not excited about anything, but just being very knowledgeable about Ames, IA and that campus and fans, I can't pass judgement yet.

Let's put it this way.  Northern Iowa, a IAA team that beat ISU last year is actually a BIGGER, much more respected program than ISU is from the Big 12. 

I'm in the wait and see status at this point... 

Fuck JJ, Lowder and Gogue though for the completely underwhelming fuck up of a search and interview process they presented the Auburn family however.

Ames definitely is a shit hole.  Chopper, when did you live in Des Moines?  I lived there from 1980-1992, and grew up in Cedar Rapids.  I did attend both Arkansas and Iowa.

[AUChizad]

Guys, I lived in Des Moines, IA all through HS...  I'm telling you, you have no idea how idiotic and whiney ISU nation is.  They are worse than "little brothers" to Iowa, they're baby brothers.  It's terrible there if you support ISU football.   

I'm not sure I'm going to bail on Chizik because of ISU just yet.   I'm not excited about anything, but just being very knowledgeable about Ames, IA and that campus and fans, I can't pass judgement yet.

Let's put it this way.  Northern Iowa, a IAA team that beat ISU last year is actually a BIGGER, much more respected program than ISU is from the Big 12. 

I'm in the wait and see status at this point... 

Fuck JJ, Lowder and Gogue though for the completely underwhelming fuck up of a search and interview process they presented the Auburn family however.

What in that post was supposed to make me think Gene Chizik wasn't a horrible, horrible hire?

[AuburnChopper 3.0]

What in that post was supposed to make me think Gene Chizik wasn't a horrible, horrible hire?

Nothing Chad, you've made it clear how you feel.  Trust me.  I'm not on here trying to make you feel better, I'd clearly fail if I tried anyway.  I was talking about the environment he came from.  It's not Auburn, AL.  Take it for what it's worth.

I lived in Des Moines (Urbandale and Johnston) from 87-93, Razor.