I actually liked Steve Alford more than most Hawkeye fans. I supported him throughout the majority of his Iowa tenure. I don’t think he was as bad as some believed. But I can’t argue that he didn’t have a boatload of excuses. He almost never shouldered any of the blame when things went wrong.So I contacted Coach Alford and, sure enough, he gave me a wide range of great excuses for why he didn’t take Iowa to the next level. I had to pick and choose my favorites from the hundreds that he offered up. Here’s a snippet of what he wrote back. (I’m kidding of course. Alford probably would have made an excuse not to respond to me if I had tried to get in touch. He’s very good at that).
10. It wasn’t me, it was the players.
9. It’s not my fault Pierre Pierce couldn’t stay out of trouble, or prison.
8. We were young and inexperienced.
7. If we coulda just kept Pierce, Marcellus Sommerville, Josh Rhodes, Nick DeWitz, Ben Rand, Alex Thompson, Carlton Reed, Courtney Scott and Rob Griffin, things would have been different.
6. Pat Harty wrote mean things about me in the Iowa City Press-Citizen.
5. The fans stopped coming to see me. I don’t get it. I always had my hair perfectly groomed and I look damn good in my sport coats.
4. How was I supposed to know Glen Worley would be a bust? He was ranked the 33rd best recruit nationally for the class of 2000 by recruiting expert Dave Telep.
3. It’s Iowa--I mean, Iowa. Give me a break.
2. We were a football school. The football program was hugely successful during my time at Iowa while my basketball program was mediocre. I still can’t understand why Hawkeye fans gravitated more towards football. I’m much better looking than Kirk Ferentz.
1. Our facilities sucked. Look at Michigan State. How could I compete with that? Yet I still found a way to produce a winning season all eight years at Iowa--a school record.
*Image from the Quad-City Times.
Haha, great post. Good ole Stevie. How about this one: "
ReplyDeleteRemember guys like Collison, Hinrich, and Korver...they didn't deserve a coach as great as myself."
"6. Pat Harty wrote mean things about me in the Iowa City Press-Citizen."
ReplyDeleteHa. I'm surprised you did not put this higher. Harty's negativity had to be one of Alford's great motivating factors to bolt for UNM.
To be fair to Alford, I'm pretty sure Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison signed with Kansas towards the end of the Tom Davis era. It's unlikely Alford would have gotten those two though.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Pat Harty, I'm sure Alford wasn't too fond of him. I've been reading Harty's coverage for years, and he wrote several negative columns on Alford. It would certainly be humorous to think that it motivated him to move to New Mexico.