Alford is GONE

Fantastic.

He's probably saying the same thing.

Didn't Lute rip Iowa and its fans after leaving?

Iowa fana are never happy. Granted, Alford may not have been the best personality for that program- but Iowa fans think its their god given right to be #1 in every sport.

Look at the job Ferentz has done, and this year many were bitching and complaining and calling for his job after one 6-6 season.

They werent happy with Tom Davis and got Alford, now they get someone else. Lute Olson left Iowa and did an even better job at Arizona. George Raveling did better at USC than Iowa. Tom Davis was doing great at Iowa and gets forced out, and takes a Drake celler team back to respectability and beats Iowa this year. The wrestling coach wins a couple national championships and looses his job.

F*** off, kentucky boy

As a native Iowan and a devoted Hawkeye, I can say that no one was calling for Ferentz's job and the end of the year. Fans were disappointed but they did not forget the three previous seasons.

As far as Alford, good riddance. Alford is a pompous ass, and outside of the Big Ten Tournament, his teams never showed tenacity nor did they play near their potential.

"Iowa fans think its their god given right to be #1 in every sport."

-You're talking out of your ass and you know it.

Alford is a legend. Iowa is a cornfield they call a state. Sorry to say, but your team will continue to struggle, regardless of whether Alford is coach or not. Who wants to play basketball in Iowa City? Have you ever been there?

ever listen to John Miller on 1460? If you have you would know that yes, people were calling for his head.

Iowa fans are never satisfied. They bitch and moan 10x worse when the Hawks lose-and its far worse than Kentucky fans losing to Louisville.

They have been railing on Ferentz and Norm Parker for some time now.

Heil Kaiser! You need a chill pill, Herky hug, or something. Lived in the Hawkeye state from jr. high through college, and we had season tickets through the 70s. While there were some great memories I will never forget the image of respected tenured faculty screaming at the coaches and players--as if these grown men were great athletes & coaches themselves.Saw the wonder of the 14-0 team in 1970, and hung on every tip, but the fans and administration were pretty hard on Ralph Miller's successor, Dick Shultz who went on to make a pretty good name for himself as Director of NCAA. Lute Olson did a great job of bringing the team back, but it wasn't surprising to hear some of the things he said after leaving.

Kaiser wrote:

F*** off, kentucky boy

As a native Iowan and a devoted Hawkeye, I can say that no one was calling for Ferentz's job and the end of the year. Fans were disappointed but they did not forget the three previous seasons.

As far as Alford, good riddance. Alford is a pompous ass, and outside of the Big Ten Tournament, his teams never showed tenacity nor did they play near their potential.

"Iowa fans think its their god given right to be #1 in every sport."

-You're talking out of your ass and you know it.

That's because Iowa wrestling sucks ass.

kentucky boy wrote:

The wrestling coach wins a couple national championships and looses his job.

I've been to Iowa City and I liked it. Who wants to play in Bloomington, hoosier79? Or Champaign, Columbus, East Lansing, Ann Arbor, Madison, Lawrence, etc......What's the difference? Alford probably won't do a whole lot at New Mexico. Where will he recruit? Can he get kids from Texas? Alford's daddy can't even get top recruits at Tech.

Bloomington is basketball. And don't insult Knight.

Every fan bases' expectations are just way too high anymore -- you can't say it just exists with one school or another. Tubby Smith is heading from Kentucky to Minnesota and some people are saying good riddance, despite the fact the won 76 percent of his games at UK. Crazy.

I think the rumors and eventual successors at both Iowa and Kentucky will come for a very interesting list.

And now Tubby Smith is the new Gophers coach? Interesting.

I lived in Iowa City several years ago (great place!) and have some wonderful friends there. They're not really basketball fans, but their perspective of Alford was that from the moment he arrived, he was a first-class jerk.

He walked around town expecting everyone to treat him the way Bobby Knight was revered in Indiana. He would respond to criticism by playing the "if you don't like me I can leave any time I want to coach the Hoosiers" card.

The last straw was when one of his star players was accused of rape a few years ago. Alford's response was to completely shrug it off. That did not play well in a liberal-leaning college town that takes victim advocacy seriously.

So I'm not at all surprised the Iowa faithful's response is/will be "don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out of town".

When Alford arrived, I think there were some high expectations - he had coached at some smaller schools with great success. In hindsight, I wonder how much of that success was due to his coaching versus how much was due to his name (a "legend" as someone put it) being able to draw top Indiana high school kids.

Alford was a great college player - perhaps the best ever at moving without the ball, but I never did like his slick coaching image and would give him a grade of B-/C+ for his coaching career at Iowa.

We'll see if he can resurrect himself in New Mexico. His "name" is going to mean less and less the further away from Indiana and the '87 championship he gets. I imagine the expectations will be lower in a smaller conference and he probably won't be competing with all of the power schools for the top recruits, but if he can find a few diamonds in the rough and he's a top x's and o's guy, perhaps it's a nice fit (New Mexico has a great tradition).

hoosier79 wrote:

Iowa is a cornfield they call a state.

Yea - and Indiana isn't? Oh, i guess they have soybeans too.

kentucky boy wrote:

Iowa fana are never happy. Granted, Alford may not have been the best personality for that program- but Iowa fans think its their god given right to be #1 in every sport.

Look at the job Ferentz has done, and this year many were bitching and complaining and calling for his job after one 6-6 season.

They werent happy with Tom Davis and got Alford, now they get someone else. Lute Olson left Iowa and did an even better job at Arizona. George Raveling did better at USC than Iowa. Tom Davis was doing great at Iowa and gets forced out, and takes a Drake celler team back to respectability and beats Iowa this year. The wrestling coach wins a couple national championships and looses his job.

First the spelling errors:

God should be capitalized.

Weren’t needs on of the apostrophe things.

Cellar does not have an “e.”

Second, it is a Good given right for Iowa to be first and best in everything.

Third, Tubby Smith is leaving the Blue Nation of Kentucky for the lowly Golden Gophers, who in reality are not “golden” and are rodents.

Talk about fans who have no idea how good they have it, look at UK's fans. Smith wins a national championship and in 10 years at Kentucky, won five SEC titles, five SEC tournament titles and had a 263-83 record. He is 387-145 in his coaching career.

It is so bad at UK he has chosen to leave and take over a team that won NINE games this year and is named after a rodent.

Go Hawks!

i'm glad to see him go, i never thought he got the best out of the teams he had. i'm a huge hawk fan (live/born in iowa) and hate to see great teams, see 2005/2006, disappoint at the big dance. as for ferenz, i haven't heard anyone say that he needs to be fired. we like him a lot and know that he is a good coach. we just had a bad year in 2006.

Thanks indeed!

Under Tom Davis, Iowa fans knew they would have a team that would win somewhere between 17-22 games a year. Davis would recruit decent talent and teach them to play within his system. The team was never going to play for a national championship, but you knew they would be competitive in the Big Ten. More important is that the fans came out to watch. They filled Carver Hawkeye and the team could protect the home court.

Alford slowly managed to alienate the fan base over the years. It has been pathetic to watch the team the last few years play to a sparse crowd. When the team could not sell-out the arena even when playing the top teams, that was the sign it was time for a change. If you are going to overpay Steve a $1.0 million per year, then he needs to show results, not just in the wins column, but in the revenue column as well.

I may have my facts wrong, but as I understand it, Pierre Pierce's 2002 sexual assault involved a member of the women's basketball team. Slick Steve stood by his "star" player. Rather than trying to involve the legal system, Steve-O stepped in to try and negotiate with the victim so that she would not press charges. In public, Alford's language implied that he stood by his player, and in the process he alienated the community. Think about this from the perspective of the victim. You were just sodomized by another athlete. Instead of going to the police, you are encouraged by administrative representatives of the athletic department to not press charges or at least to reduce the charges. You are on scholarship and suddenly wonder what will happen to this scholarship if you press charges. Tough decision for a 19-20 year old, knowing that your name might show up in the media. Then of course, after everything gets swept under the rug, Pierce is convicted of assault again in 2005.

I know of MANY, MANY Hawkeye fans who have refused to attend a men's basketball game until Alford was gone. I was one of them for the first few years, only last year finally decided that to go. Although I wanted to support the players and I wanted the team to win, in the back of my mind I smiled a bit when they would lose certain games such as UNI or Drake this year.

When I saw the news that Alford might leave last night on espn.com, I told my wife that I wanted to buy season tickets next year.

The truth in Iowa is this:

When Greg McDermott gets his guys at Iowa State, they are going to be the dominant team in Iowa.

Same thing when Gene Chizik gets his at ISU for football.

Cale Sanderson already kicked your butt in wrestling and was 2nd in NCAA as a new head coach.

There is a huge change going on in Ames and you self-absorbed Hawks had better get used to being second fiddle in your "cornfield of a state" to use someone else's words.

and their women are better looking in Ames, too.

Feel free to comment.

What ARE you talking about?