DanMacFan

We told you so! (big grin) Best wishes; like other ISU fans, I'm a MEAN GREEN fan these days.

Even an opinion from an outsider? ;-) "Canned" doesn't fully explain what happened at Iowa State. Jamie Pollard became athletics director in September 2005, a season in which ISU was oh so close to winning 10 or 11 games. Very, very close. Just a handful of points. The next fall, Mac won four games, just one in conference. Fans were fatigued with the roller-coaster; the typical fan attitude was, DannyMac has been tremendous for the program, he has built the foundation, after a dozen years maybe it's time to see if someone else can take it to the next level. Late in the 2006 season, Pollard and McCarney held a joint news conference to announce it would be DannyMac's last in Ames. Pollard will always do what's best for ISU athletics, period. But, this was not a rancorous separation of coach from university. Pollard had tears in his eyes and an emotional voice when talking, said when he took the job he thought Mac would always be the coach. The point: Pollard has the highest respect for Mac, and Mac's removal from the job was highly painful for the AD. It wasn't a rough shove out the door. Today, 90 percent of Cyclone fandom has the highest respect for Mac. Just some context.

Hey, everyone, I believe so strongly in Dan McCarney (DanMac to many of we Iowa State fans) as a man and as a coach that I could not resist commenting here. I hope most of you will not mind my presence and will listen (read) what I have to say about your new coach. First, you cannot understand what DanMac's hiring will mean to NTU before you get to know the man, imho. He is an exceptionally fine person; this will be important to many of you. But, like any fan group, you have members who not give much of a hoot about that but will be concerned only about what happens on the football field. I believe you will be happily surprised there, too. Quick point: DanMac resigned at Iowa State two-thirds of the way through the 2006 season, his 12th in Ames. He was followed by Gene Chizik, who stayed two seasons in Ames before bailing for Auburn. (I haven't looked, is Auburn ranked No. 1 in the polls?) Chizik was 5-19 in his two seasons with the Cyclones (a win percentage of 20%). Chizik had far more capable players to work with than did DanMac when he arrived to takeover the ISU program in 1995. The program was in shambles. It took DanMac six years to turn the corner at ISU, in 2000 posting a 9-3 record and defeating Pitt in the Insight Bowl. In those first five seasons, DanMac's win percentage was 23%. In my opinion DanMac did far more with what he had at ISU than did Chizik, who took over a program that had been to five bowl games the previous seven seasons. DanMac the man? He is irrepressible, indefatigable, and always, always positive. This wore on some persons in the ISU fan base over the years, because through the ups and downs DanMac did not change. He was always up, it's his nature, who he is. Those fans who rode the football roller coaster and were mentally down when the team troughed did not want to hear DanMac always finding positive things to talk about when the going was tough. But, that's who he is. He WILL NOT be mentally defeated. My personal knowledge of DanMac goes back to his high school days at Iowa City High. An older brother of mine is one of DanMac's better friends; my brother was a weightlifting maniac, and it was he who introduced Mac to training for football. They are close to this day. (I know Mac personally only to say hello.) Mac was an OG starter at Iowa when the Hawkeyes were mediocre at best, but he excelled through his dedication and willpower (as do many athletes, of course). He was a grad assistant at Iowa when Hayden Fry was hired at Iowa in 1979 (from NTU, where his six-year record was 40-23-3, iirc). One coach from the previous Iowa staff was retained, and one Hawkeye grad assistant was hired as a full-time assistant coach. DanMac so impressed Fry, as Fry has discussed over the years, that Mac (maybe 26 at the time) was the only Iowan on a staff of Texans. Unusual position for a young man in his first full-time job. Iowa had not had a winning season for 20 years (1961-80), yet in Fry's third season at Iowa the Hawkeyes tied for the Big Ten crown and won a trip to the Rose Bowl, its first since January 1959. More Big Ten titles followed, and DanMac's defensive lines were tough, rugged mainstays of those teams. He was a key man in Iowa's rise to national prominence under Fry. Just as key, DanMac became known as a terrific recruiter; his energy and positive outlook were great assets. Another first year coach on Fry's staff was Barry Alvarez, who became the Wisconsin head man in the late 1980s. Before accepting the Wisconsin DC job offered by Alvarez, DanMac turned down an assistant's job at Notre Dame. You're all familiar, aren't you, with the fantastic turnaround job Alvarez did at Wisconsin? Big Ten championships resulted, and DanMac's role as DC was key. Iowa State came calling. You cannot know, likely, how moribund was the ISU program. If not the worst Div. I program in the land, it was close. The school to this day has never won a football conference championship outright, a singular fact for a BCS school, I believe. (For such a fine school and beautiful campus, it's a sad state of affairs. But with Paul Rhoads at the helm, a DanMac protege, the football roller coaster is grinding upward.) Sure, DanMac was 13-42 in his first five seasons at Iowa State, but unless you understand the context in which DanMac labored, I contend you cannot understand, and cannot fairly evaluate, DanMac the coach. He would not be deterred, he was irrepressible, he was always positive. Season six was the breakthrough, the 9-3 record was the most single-season wins in school history (that tells you something important). Five bowl games in the next seven seasons followed. He laid the foundation for unmatched success (we believe Rhoads is on his way to even greater success) at what arguably is the toughest Div. I job in America. DanMac will represent NTU with the highest integrity, unbridled enthusiasm, and a positive outlook unmatched by few human beings. What a wealth of football knowledge the man possesses. Including a national championship earned under Urban Meyer at the U. of Florida. His greatest negative, in the view of many ISU fans, is his extreme loyalty. While the wide consensus in Cyclone country is that ISU intercollegiate athletics has never had a better ambassador, many of us feel he was reluctant to fire assistants when performance called for it. A case in point was when OLine coach Marty Fine was replaced in DanMac's last couple of seasons with Barney Cotton, who joined the staff after serving under Frank Solich at BC's alma mater, Nebraska. Cotton became an escape goat for those ISU fans who were disappointed with ISU's OLine performance the last few seasons. Yet, today, Cotton is the OLine coach and assistant head coach at Nebraska. . . . My bottom-line contention: If you believe you know DanMac the man and coach based on his overall win-loss record at Iowa State University, you do not. Fry's Iowa program owned the state of Iowa at the time DanMac became ISU coach. It took a little time, but eventually he wrested control from Iowa and won five consecutive games. ISU has the Big 12's smallest financial budget, it is overshadowed yet in Iowa, where the population is under 3 million, and the primary recruiting grounds of Texas and Florida are far away. DanMac saved Iowa State football; it is hard to imagine that the school would have survived to remain in the Big 12 without DanMac's relentless effort at resuscitation. If you don't understand how mighty this achievement is, that's understandable. You're Texans, you expect much more than this. But DanMac, in many ways, is Atlas. I'm one Cyclones fan who can't wait to see what he can do in assets-rich Texas. Can't wait. The man is strength from his toes to the hair on his head. I hope most of you will give him a fair chance. If not, I'll wager he'll win you over eventually, anyway. Best wishes.