Iowa State has lost over two-thirds of its football games over the past ten seasons, plus one game. Matt Campbell says enough is enough.
The first-year Cyclone head coach brushed off a question about his own personal disappointment in losing to Northern Iowa in his inaugural game at ISU. Instead, he showed empathy for a ridiculously loyal fan base that has endured a 41-83 (.331) I-State football record since the start of the 2006 season, including a woeful 8-31 record (.205) in its last 39 games.
“I hate it for our fan base. For me, I’m good, to be honest with you,” Campbell said following the 25-20 UNI victory in front of 60,629 at Jack Trice Stadium. “My biggest regret is for this fan base. We’ve got a great fan base here. I told our kids: it’s not okay. The reality of it is we have to do a great job in understanding that this is a really special place to play college football.
“There’s got to be a point a time where we draw the line and quit disappointing them,” he continued. “And so that’s my mission, that’s my goal. It’s not about me; it’s never been about me. I feel bad for our kids but we all have to grow and get better if we want to get this thing to where it needs to get.”
Campbell’s perspective is refreshing because not only has Iowa State been disappointing its fans for too long, it’s been disappointing an extremely forgiving fan base by coming up short of a relatively easy-to-reach goal. The bar to make a bowl game has been lowered all the way to .500 and I-State fans have said okay, that’s all you have to do. Think of your most easy-going college instructor in your most punt class, and make it pass/fail for good measure. The test to please ISU fans is even easier than that.
A day might come where that isn’t good enough for Iowa State fans, if they were ever so fortunate as to have a hint of a reason to expect more. But that’s a discussion for another day. Right now the question becomes: what is the ISU administration doing to empower Campbell to complete his mission? Is he being given everything he asks for to get the job done? Or is he being told no? Is his road to coaching ISU to a .500 record being made straight, smooth and true by administrators, or are they not only refusing to move obstacles, but throwing them in his way as well?
We don’t know the answer to those questions directly. But they will be revealed indirectly over time by the one method that never fails to reveal all about a college football program, from the receptionist to the graduate assistant to the coach to the athletic director to the president: W-L results on the field. W-L results blow away all the smoke and shatter all the mirrors, revealing everything about an athletic department’s commitment to successful football.
And remember, successful in this case is only going .500. If it’s important at all to Iowa State University to be successful in football, it should be virtually impossible NOT to go .500 almost every season. Yet the Cyclones have only won 33.1% of their games in roughly the past decade, and only 20.5% of their games since late in the 2012 season. Campbell isn’t accountable for any of that, save the UNI loss of two nights ago. But he isn’t pretending that the Cyclone football program started the day he arrived and that the fans didn’t bring that 41-83 and 8-31 disappointment with them to the stadium on Saturday night.
Trying to truly see things from the fan’s perspective is uncommon for those on the other side of the college athletics transaction. They will always say a lot of the right things about fans and to fans, but there’s a gulf that can only be spanned by some really deliberate empathy. Campbell seems to genuinely make that effort and he showed it in his comments Saturday night.
