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Offseason Blogpoll Roundtable Thingy

FireMarkMay.com has prompted an offseason roundtable. I figure I'll answer some questions since I haven't posted in a while, as I've been working on a BIG change for this blog and it's direction.

Your Home Field Advantage

Give the more zealous portion of your fanbase a religion. What's this cult following? Feel free to give the splitters a derogatory nickname.

Kind of a tough question to start with. I kind of think that you're pretty zealous if you're an Iowa State fan, as no normal person would subject themselves to the stuff we put up with year in and year out. You've got everything from kids who were brought up bleeding cardinal and gold to little old ladies who won't miss a football game, and also won't miss a chance to yell at the refs. As far as the splitters, I just feel sorry for them.

Your biggest rival is in town, and College Gameday is coming....to your citaaaaaaay... Create a blatant corporate sellout promotion to appeal to the mass unwashed.

The way too easy one would be something by Hooters....hot wings of course. Hooters founder Ed Droste went to ISU, so we should exploit that to the best of our abilities. The second choice would be sponsorship from the city of Ames. Bring in a bag of trash for the city's incinerator, and recieve a free Clone Cone.

Add one local delicacy to your stadium's concessions. Post-tax pricing is optional.

Casey's pizza. Yes, it's gas station pizza. But it's just so greasy that it's deliciousness can't be topped. Another option would be Hickory Park's tasty bbq dinner, but I figure that's a little messy for a game at the Jack.

With an unlimited AD budget, add or subtract one thing to your school's gameday experience that has nothing to do with football.
Is finishing the hoseshoe and option? If not, I wouldn't mind people buying more tickets, either. Finally, it'd be really cool if you could replace the submarine sound before kickoffs with actual tornado sirens throughout the parking lots and in the stadium.

General NCAA questions

Coin a hilariously unrealistic stereotype that you would like to "make stick" for this upcoming season.

The Texas Longhorns have actually been genetically engineered over the years to met the top specification's of Mack Brown's coaching handbook. The food at the Texas dining centers is actually injected with moose testosterone to boost the player's drive and willingness to charge anything that moves.

Redesign your conference or independent schedule with reckless abandon. Be prepared to include compensation for jilted schools and conferences in your explanation.

The Big 8 splits from the other four schools to leave them on their own. At the very least, we'll kick out A&M and replace them with Rice, or Arkansas or someone else. I just hate A&M, and I can kind of stand Texas. Of course, they could go too.

Following up on your new realignment, blow up the BCS and devise a national playoff system, money grabs and missed exams be damned. Using your new fantasy conferences is optional.

NCAA football would have a selection committe, like basektball, to determine entrance into the national championship and twenty bowl games. This will establish solid matchups and the BCS will feature the best teams and matchups in America. Also, all bowls must be south of the Mason-Dixon line and must be named after a food or tangible object, not a website.

Elect one public figure to replace NCAA president Myles Brand. Anyone with proper name recognition is eligible.
Me.

Chizik Lands First Recruit For 08

CycloneReport

WR Russ Ellington out of Homewood, Illinois, over schools like Colorado and Iowa. Had 53 catches for 1,000 yards and 14 touchdowns as a junior.

Cy is damn sexy

Well, if you aren't a regular listener to the NowLive Show featuring Peter Bean of Burnt Orange Nation and Orson Swindle of EDSBS, you should be. Last night's show/podcast focused on the Big 12. The surprise of the night was Iowa State seemingly nabbing the sexy mascot category. The four questions they asked of their guests......

1. Who emerges atop the Big 12 scrum this year? Whoever wins Texas-Oklahoma. I really think it'll be Texas, but I still think there's a shot the Sooners will sneak in there. I think Nebraska will win the North.

2. Now take it a step further. Does the winner of the Big 12 play for the BCS Title game this year? Nope. I will say that Texas would be the only team that would have a shot.

3. If I paid you $500,000 would you permanently move to Nebraska? If not, what's the threshhold? $1,000,000? $10m? For how long would you move to Nebraska for $500,000? Fuck no. Anyone who has driven from Iowa to Colorado and had to do that godawful stretch west through Nebraska on I-80 just wants to load up on anti-depressants. Omaha might as well switch to Iowa, since the state of Nebraska is one of misery. To get me to move there, I'd need multimillions.

4. Because our show is so dependent on juvenile humor, the obligatory sex question: What's the sexiest mascot in the Big 12? Ah, the delinquent sex question. Do you have a pirate/raider fetish? Collie guy? Maybe you dig the Cowboy? Or you're Baylor-curious? Gotta go with Pistol Pete from Oklahoma State. Great facial hair including the five o'clock shadow, not to mention the guns.


Half-shaven. All sexy.

As far as other stuff going on in the show, they discuss Iowa State football for about a minute. Chip Brown from the Dallas Morning News thinks we screwed up by getting rid of McCarney, and he's not quite sure why Chizik took the job or if he can do much.

With a show hosted by a Florida fan and a Texas fan, and a couple of guests from Dallas, I guess I shouldn't expect too much Big 12 North talk. I suppose the North needs to rise again.

Afternoon Tea

Ahh, the summer. I'm working more than I ever have before, so posting is staying light.

We'll start off with a bit of Big 12 news. Maurice Purify has been suspended indefinitely due to drunk driving charges. The Nebraska football team's been kind of a mess this offseason...a team that should really be our top conference rival.

The Cyclone Road Crew has been travelling the state on the Cyclone Tailgate Tour. With nightly coverage on television stations in the areas of these visits, anything we are doing to get the Cyclone mojo out there can only be positive. I really think getting our big three coaches out there will help sell our teams. For people that have not seen or heard our coaches talk, they'll be impressed by Chizik's intensity, McDermott's true-blue Iowan mannerisms, and Sanderson's ultimate humble, nice guy routine. Throw in some Cyclone cheerleaders and football players, and the even really has a chance to be a positive experience.

SI.com says we've got the 8th worst looking uniforms in big-time college football. We're one spot ahead of the green Notre Dame unis (which I like). Of course, you all know that they declared Oregon as having the worst uniforms. I don't know about others, but I kind of have a soft spot for ugly uniforms. That being said, I don't think ours are THAT bad, and I'm intrigued to see how gold pants work out.

Coach Bill Fennelly's son Billy has been hired by the University of Maryland as an administrative assistant. If he's anything like his dad, whatever college gives him a shot will be beyond happy.


Ahh yes, the Iowa-Iowa State game is on VERSUS. Yes, I realize not everyone has this channel. It's on cable. Hopefully this makes more tailgaters enter the stadium and more tickets sold in general. I'm not out and out opposed to this.


The A&M blogger the 12th Manchild has some pretty passionate thoughts about Jamie Pollard's desire to share Big 12 television reveues. One surprising stat is that ISU is actually 6th in the conference in television revenue at $7.34 million, just 200k south of the league average. What's interesting to note is the divisional breakup of the revenues: three South, four North, three South, two North.

Big 12 Allocation (2005-06)
1, Texas $9.68 million
2, Oklahoma $9.09 million
3, Texas A&M $8.23 million
4, Nebraska $7.81 million
5, Colorado $7.64 million
6, Iowa State $7.34 million
7, Kansas $7.28 million
8, Texas Tech $6.79 million
9, Baylor $6.63 million
10, Oklahoma State $6.62 million
11, Missouri $6.53 million
12, Kansas State $6.47 million

Pollard has a point in that the television revenue sharing that happens in the Big 10 has helped expand and strengthen conference exposure. I don't know why fans of the conference's schools with the best financial support are bitching so much about television revenues. Maybe they just don't ever want to have to deal with the smaller market schools in the Big 12.

Quite a rift that's developing between South and North schools in the conference, and between the high and low revenue schools.

GET YOUR POPCORNS

I lied in my last post. I have to share this with you.

This thread at CycloneFanatic links to this MySpace with this image from Cyclone recruit Allen Bell.




My God, that's funny.

Nice Photoshoppin' too.

It's a ridiculously slow time to be a Cyclone

I wish there was some sort of news relating to Iowa State. There really isn't. To start things off, I've got a new job this summer that's wearing me out.

I don't really feel like talking any more about the chaplain thing. It's not a big deal. It really isn't. I just want to see my football team win. Speaking of which, check out the cool throwback unis the team will sport against Iowa:



Cool, yo.

Other than that, there's not much going on with football. We still don't have any commits for '08, and I really hope that changes soon (Paging Sam McGuffie).

The Cap City League will be starting soon. Let's hope our new guys tear it up. I still think Diante Garrett may be the most fun to watch out of the group.

I really wish there was something of any interest going on right now, but there's not. I'll try and come up with some entertaining crap in the future, but I wanted to let both of you readers know I'm still here.

The Mystical, Magical MySpace World of Coach TJ Otzelberger

So, I was surfing around the world of MySpace, following a link to the profile of Cyclone recruit Craig Brackins. There's a highlight video of him on there by "TJ". I immediately associated that with assistant coach T.J. Otzelberger, because the other videos by the user included clips of Diante Garrett, Charles Boozer and the Cyclones. Lo and behold, I stumbled on what really seems to be the MySpace page of one of our assistant coaches. Either that, or someone's been collecting a lot of video to impersonate Coach Otzelberger. I mean, I could probably do it if I had the time, but I can't imagine anyone is that bored.

His MySpace slogan?

""FEEL THE MAGIC!!! WE R ABOUT 2 DO THIS BIG!!!""

Goddamn right, Coach O.

Friends?

They include Craig Brackins, Lucca Staiger, recruit Josh Crittle, commit Dominique Buckley, grad assistant Erik Crawford and a host of other profiles I didn't care enough to decode.

Now, as far as I know, there aren't any rules being broken. But I hope that Coach O and the staff are watching to make sure they are staying within the rules and regulations of contact with recruits.

Chaplain'd

Now they've gone and done it. I thought I could cruise through a week without anything happening in relation to Iowa State athletics. Sure, there was the comeptition for Cy as the nation's most dominant mascot. There's also the tribute game for Barry Stevens. All cool stuff, right?

Now, there's a controversy a-brewin'. Jamie Pollard and Gene Chizik would like to permanently add a chaplain to the team staff, completely funded, of course, by private donations. There's now a petition signed by 100 ISU faculty members.

Being a big-time liberal, I was a little skeptical. I've got less of an issue with it being billed to private individuals. I'm not paying for the new chaplain, and either are any other taxpayers. Secondly, it would not be mandatory to meet with said chaplain. He's probably going to serve in a role similar to one's high school counselor.He'll be there to help, but he's not going to be leading prayers over the loudspeaker at football games. Of course, it's a little hard to tell what his specific role would be, without knowing who it would be or hearing more about if from Coach Chizik.

This leads me to my surfing the interwebs the other day. I navigated over to DawgSports, the world's foremost UGA blog. Coincedentally, he just wrapped up a two part interview with Kevin "Chappy" Hines, the chaplain for the Georgia football team. Here's what Hines says about his role:

What do I do as a chaplain? I do Bible studies. I do devotionals. I do discipleships one-on-one with players. Any time there's a surgery at the hospital, an injury, anything, I'm there. I just went to Cancun and married Adam Johnson, a former player. David Pollack, Russ Tanner, Will Witherspoon, Lee Jackson. So I've done weddings. I've done a funeral for a player's baby. I spoke at Michael Lemon's mother's funeral, so I've done those sort of things.

I am not the church. I work alongside the local church. I try to get these guys plugged in to church, but I don't do the ordinances, the Lord's Supper, the baptism. Other than that, I'm an ordained minister.

People ask me, "What do you do as a chaplain?" I tell them all that stuff, but, then, really, when you get down to it, I love these players and coaches. I've got a vast background. I've done things that weren't good, I've done things that were good, I've been around. I haven't done everything, but I've done a lot.

So I just love these kids. Let's break down "love." What is love? It's an action. It's a verb. I'm a servant. I listen to them. The first thing I do if a player or a coach comes in is I sit down, here or in their office, and I just sit there and listen. The next thing I do is I open the Word of God and I say, "O.K., I'm going to offer them Biblical teaching with a Christian world view. Well, here's what the Bible says about that."

That's a little bit more imposing of the Christian religion than I'd personally like to see on our players. It'll all really depend on who Gene has in mind. This line from Hines encouraged me, however.

So, whether you're a Christian or not, I'm going to encourage you. That's what I do. I love these players and coaches, man.

If that's the main objective for our new chaplain, I'm more than okay with that.

All in all, I'm not opposed to the idea as long as nothing is required, and the position stays private and the role is like Hines said, to encourage students and to be there as a spiritual guide for players who pursue it. I have no problem with a chaplain being there as a resource. There's been one before. I would expect any new chaplain to respect the views of the athletes, and I would expect the athletes to be men about this as well.

This really shouldn't be a big deal.

CycloneFanatic

I dunno about you, but I think CycloneFanatic has vanished. Or, my computers been having some issues for a few days.

I don't know what happened to it.

Murphy's Law

Due to a serious lack of anything having to do with anything with Iowa State athletics, here's a glorification of a link. Murphy's Law is the blog of WHO-TV sports director Keith Murphy. I quickly found out that he is the best sportscaster in central Iowa (John Walters is all ours, so I don't count him) as well as Eastern Iowa too. If we can convince him to bring the same wit to his blog (more frequently) that he brings to sports segments, I think we'd all be a little better off.

---

On a side note, I suppose we did extend Jamie Pollard's contract, but no one was really surprised by that.

Dodie Dunson to Transfer

Cyclones.com link

Farwell Dodie. We'd been hearing that he's heading to Vincennes JC for a couple of months now. Whether or not he lands there, I don't know. This opens up another scholarship, which should either go to a JUCO or banked for in the future. I'd kind of actually prefer a JUCO, ensuring we have a scholarship for 09.

BTW, I started a new job today. Yay for me.