Wednesday, November 8, 2006

McCarney Resignation

Well, the time came, after all of the weeks of talk throughout Cyclone Nation the time came that head coach Dan McCarney announced that he will resign once this years’ games are complete. In case you are unaware of what may have led up to this, a quick review. 2004 & 2005 saw the ISU football team make tremendous efforts to win the big 12 North title. But, both times coming down to the final regular season game in which Iowa State led, they failed to finish it off. With expectations high with tremendous offensive talent, the team struggled this year, barely winning over Toledo in the home opener in 3OT’s; Squeaking by UNLV and by Division II team Northern Iowa… Add on top the toughest schedule in Cyclone history and one of the toughest in the nation this year and the team now sits at 3-7 on the year. No bowl game even in sight for a team that was expected to put up a great fight for the big 12 north title once again this year.

But, those are the negatives of the McCarney era! McCarney was brought into the program over 12 years ago to turn around a team that hadn’t had consecutive winning seasons since, well nobody can really remember! He did turn the program around, put it on the map as it has been said throughout the season looking back on things. Making Iowa State a potential contender for conference titles and a name often heard in the bowl season for the first time in its’ history. A complete losing program, declared to be one of the worst in the nation is now a fairly respected team. This has all been done thanks to his work here, which shouldn’t go unnoticed. A lot of the things that are being said are probably things that you will hear all the time from people, but I still gotta say what I feel. Honestly, I thought that McCarney would be here for one more season, that one last hope with Meyer and Blythe next year for them to do something great. But, that was before this latest weekends lashing from a Kansas team which was probably and simply unacceptable by the programs’ standards. With all of the talk throughout the fans, you knew it was coming… Although even through all of the weeks of talk to the players, staff and even to McCarney and his staff, it was consistently said that it would be the end of the season before something was done. The only thing that is the mystery to me was why it was made at this time, why not wait until the end of the season or was their finally to much pressure on everybody to hold back the obvious thing that was likely to occur. Don’t know and that was never really explained from what I heard at the conference…

All in all… Coach Mac had a great tenure here at Iowa State, I hope he is still shown respect from the Cyclone fans for all that he really has done for the program. It was time to move on and that is what has happened… I hope that the last two games for the Cyclones finish off on a positive note and can get the things rolling for next season as that is what we have to look forward too now as Cyclone fans. I can’t wait to see what the Pollards’ staff can bring in for a head coach and staff next year. I’m sure I missed over quite a few things that I wanted to say, but either way, I got my point/review across. Thanks for reading…

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