Cyclone fans everywhere understand the pain I write this post with. Our football program is far from perfect, but it has come a long ways towards making perfect a reasonable hope. A few blocks not missed, a couple tackles made, A pass not dropped or an interception made, those tiny differences could turn a good season into a great season.
Most of my fellow Cyclone fans have experienced this in basketball, but we are not used to experiencing the hopes with football. We are a legitimate Top 10 team to start the coming season and just taking care of business will likely put us back in the Big 12 Championship game, and potentially offer a bid to the College Football Playoff.
We are also unfamiliar with this level of devastatingly horrible play by our men’s basketball team.
I wish there wasn’t such a stark contrast, but am glad our football team is experiencing success, or I’d likely stop caring about Cyclone sports altogether.
The basketball program won 4 of the last 6 Big 12 Tournaments. Outright. Not shared, but won at least 3 games in a row to win the conference tourney. In almost every single one of those seasons, from 2014 through 2019, the Cyclones were already NCAA tournament qualified and were likely just playing for a higher seed.
This season, it would take a NCAA tournament win in order to even sneak into the tourney. With 2 total wins on the season, and zero in the conference, that is more than a long shot. It is a near impossibility.
A case could be made that some abnormally good shooting and other teams having off nights could all happen. The stars could align and what was a 5-7 point loss could turn into a win. The thing is, the majority of the conference games haven’t even been close.
It is pathetic.
How have the Cyclones fallen this far and this fast?
Ultimately, the blame goes to where the credit went when they were good…the coach.
The coach is responsible for recruiting. Early on Coach Prohm took some shots on some transfers to try and provide some immediate help for a team chock full of talent to help them succeed. Those transfers amounted to little help, however, and ultimately left early gaps in recruiting that needed to be filled quicker. Then you have the next issue, which is young recruits. Kids coming out of high school or prep schools that have either been super talented and developed quickly, announced early that they were leaving.
Those are the kids who you are grateful for, but have to recognize they contributed little to the program as they didn’t produce or manifest their development while wearing the Cardinal and Gold. I feel happy for them, and most of them were decent, but fans watching never got to see the best of those athletes. Their early departures also left more scholarships to be filled prior to when Coach Prohm likely believed he would need to.
Next are the bulk of kids that came in. They either haven’t developed as expected, and stuck around, or didn’t develop and transferred early for many reasons. Either way, they aren’t developing. So the 4 year kids are reaching their junior and senior seasons and not providing the experience and leadership to make up for gaps in talent, or they are leaving early and causing a similar gap in those areas.
That just highlights the personnel problems.
I don’t expect every coach to catch lightning in a bottle, I expect them to understand they won’t have know how to address shortcomings.
Loyalty has its faults. If a kid doesn’t develop and isn’t going to contribute to winning, you don’t take the scholarship, but you certainly can make him earn it and either contribute in other ways, or choose to transfer. If Coach Prohm has done that, one wonders if he is running off the players he should keep, and keeping the players he should run off.
Ultimately, as a fan we can’t really know. There is a lot that goes on in the practice facility and behind closed doors that could explain this, but the issue is that I don’t think any fans are listening anymore. I have watched one game since the beginning of January, and I don’t think I’m alone in that.
As busy as I am and have been for several years, turning on the game and having it on while doing something else was just a way of life. I didn’t want to miss any big moments. Pivotal plays or season changing games were part of my routine. Now I wait for a Cyclone Fanatic recap and feel sorry for the poor sap that is required to talk about the mounting losses.
I can’t even tell you when the next game is, and I’m so apathetic, I don’t even want to look it up to put it in my blog post.
I’m not alone.
A quick perusal of the usual banter of Cyclone fans during game will present you with the chirping crickets, or the proverbial sound of a pin dropping. Cyclone fans are done watching it.
It wasn’t even this bad in the worst of Wayne Morgan or Greg McDermott’s years. There was always a sign of hope or something to cling to.
I don’t see it in this team, and I don’t know how to find it. That isn’t my job, though. That is the job of Steve Prohm.
For how much longer he gets to enjoy that job, I don’t know. He might be saved by the weird COVID season. If his seat hasn’t been vacated, I think it will clearly be on fire, and without success next season, will likely result in just that. I’m not even sure he’ll make it that far though.
This is pathetic.
Fortunately, my life doesn’t revolve around the play of 18-23 year old young men. If it did, I might need a padded room. What does matter to me is independence from other people and maintaining control of my life. Since everything in life requires money, controlling your money is the most important thing you can do. Read “The Case for IBC” where the authors, Nash, Lara, and Murphy, adeptly make the case for the infinite banking concept. It is basically an engineer’s financial dream.
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