Hoiberg plays to Cyclone hearts, and that matters

AMES - You know the knee-jerk argument against Fred Hoiberg being Iowa State's new men's basketball coach.

Sure, he's had spent nearly all of his 37 years of life in basketball, but he's never really coached. You wouldn't let airplane mechanics fly jets without piloting experience just because they love aviation.

The comparison, of course, is irrelevant and absurd. Besides, you can find countless examples of people who had no experience at a specific job and went on to be successful at it.

So let critics blow their futile horns. Hoiberg is offering Cyclone fans shelter from the storm of what had been growing unease about their men's basketball program. By many accounts, those fans are welcoming it.

See, this deal of rooting for a team is about one thing more than any other. Namely, it's wanting to get your heartstrings tugged. It's tradition and memories, and wanting to witness tradition and memories in the making.

It's about enjoying and connecting to the people on that team. Iowa State people don't just like Hoiberg, they trust and respect him. They love him.

He gave those fans four years of straight-arrow behavior and terrific performance as an ISU player. He remained a visible Cyclone fan in the 15 years he spent in the NBA as a player and executive.

Hoiberg led Ames High to a state basketball title. Before he played for Johnny Orr at Iowa State, he was a ball boy at Hilton Coliseum for one of Orr's teams. Orr used to rub Hoiberg's head before games.

“I used to walk to the arena,” Hoiberg said Wednesday.

He hasn't been a coach? Judging from most of the ISU fans I've seen and heard from since Tuesday's announcement of his hiring, they'll take the person over the coaching resume.

Immediately after I got out of my car in the Jacobson Athletic Building parking lot here Wednesday morning to cover Hoiberg's reintroductory press conference, an older gentleman from Des Moines approached me to tell me how delighted he was with the hire. He didn't know or care I was in the media. He just wanted to tell someone.

ISU Athletic Director Jamie Pollard said that kind of reaction is a nice short-term benefit of the hire, but isn't what will matter in the long-term. He's right, and it's good that he acknowledged it given his hire looks to many like a move made mainly to appease fans after a rough basketball stretch.

But the short-term thing does matter. It matters greatly that college fans like their coach. Players come and go, and quickly. The coaches are the constants. Many who did their fair share of winning eventually were undone because they never got wrapped by the hearts of their team's fans.

Jim Hallihan, the lead assistant coach to Johnny Orr in Hoiberg's first three seasons as a Cyclone player in the early 1990s,

spoke for a lot of Iowa Staters when he said this:

“I'm so excited. I've had goose bumps since they announced this. It's a great, great day for Iowa State basketball.

“Fred's a phenomenal person and a great basketball guy. But he's also one of our own. Iowa State is a very difficult job, and you have to have more than just a desire to be successful. You have to have a stake in it. Fred has a stake in it. This is where he wants to be. He's not trying to get to someplace else.”

No question, this hire is a reach. But it also may have been Pollard's best option. If he had hired a head coach of a mid-major or an assistant coach of a basketball power, they would be unfamiliar here and wouldn't stir winter warmth when expected lumps are taken here in the next season or two.

And what would stop him from getting out the moment the getting was good, like other coaches Pollard has hired at Iowa State?

No, you're better off with this coach who says these things:

“Both of us (he and his wife, Carol) were raised in Ames. We saw the opportunity to come home and make our dreams come true.”

And “It had nothing to do with ‘Should I take this?' If I was going to get the opportunity to come here, if I got offered the job, I was taking this hands-down, no questions asked.”

Said Hallihan: “I bet we sell out our first game next year. I don't even know who we're playing. It might be the Sisters of the Poor. I bet we sell out.”

It doesn't matter what Basketball America thinks of this 3-point long shot of a hire. Iowa State fans like it. If they still do three or four years from now, Pollard struck gold. If not, it was worth the try.