Bully the Big Ten bullies: Ben McCollum’s self-described mission as Iowa’s new coach

IOWA CITY — Coaches always win the introductory press conference.

It was no different Tuesday when Ben McCollum made his Carver-Hawkeye Arena debut as Iowa’s men’s basketball coach. The 43-year-old had a selling point, however, that was catnip to Hawkeye fans hungry for a reinvigorated program.

He was born in Iowa City, grew up in Storm Lake, attended Hawkeye basketball summer camps there, and has always been a Hawkeyes fan. He was dropping names of 1990s Iowa players Tuesday better than most fans of Tom Davis’ teams of that era can.

“I always dreamed of playing for the Hawkeyes,” McCollum said. “I just wasn’t good enough. But now hopefully I can bring success here.”

The 43-year-old has a 6-year contract (starting at $3.35 million the first year) with which to try to get that done. After a hugely successful 14-year stint as the coach at Northwest Missouri State where he won four NCAA Division II national-titles, McCollum served the first year of a 5-year contract at Drake in 2024-25. Immediate success was the result.

The Bulldogs went 31-4, won the Missouri Valley Conference regular-season and league-tournament titles, and knocked off Missouri in the first-round of the NCAA tournament before losing to Texas Tech last Saturday. About 24 hours later, he accepted Iowa Athletic Director Beth Goetz’s offer to become Iowa’s next coach.

“It’s truly a special day for Hawkeye men’s basketball and the start of a new opportunity to build on tradition, inspire success, and ignite the passion of the loyal black-and-gold,” Goetz said.

In the season just ended, Iowa averaged a paid home attendance of 9,161, its lowest in 60 years. The actual average number of people attending the Hawkeyes’ Big Ten home games was a paltry 5,710. That, more than anything, led to Goetz firing 15-year head coach Fran McCaffery after a 17-16 season, 7-13 in the Big Ten.

Which made it almost startling to see Iowa students lined up outside Carver to greet the new coach before his press conference, wearing the trademark McCollum game day look of a white dress shirt and a tie. Unlike his Drake blue tie, though, it’s now gold.

McCollum said a lot of what coaches say at these initial gatherings with the media, with doting donors also in attendance. He said his program has to connect with Iowa students, and vice versa. He said he wants to see a full Carver.

He also, however, didn’t couch anything when it came to his past successes or expectations about chasing titles in a program that hasn’t been to an NCAA Sweet 16 since 1999 or won a Big Ten regular-season title since 1979.

“Your objective is to win championships,” McCollum said. “The reason we went to Drake is we felt we had an opportunity to win the Missouri Valley Conference championship and get to the NCAA tournament. … So you know that’s obviously what we’re trying to build.

“There’s a lot of great coaches that have helped grow this, Lute Olson, Tom Davis obviously, George Raveling, and Fran on top of that.

“Hopefully it’s in good hands right now and we can kind of bring championships to the University of Iowa and Hawkeye nation.

Some basketball coaches read books by basketball coaching greats like John Wooden or Pat Riley. McCollum has taken one of his biggest cues from Sun Tzu’s ancient military treatise, “The Art of War.”

In one passage, the author says the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him.

That, McCollum suggested, will be the Hawkeye way.

“I think our first or second year at Northwest I had these huge packets. It actually was stolen from a team in the Big Ten — I won't name names — from their football program. And I thought, man, this is like all this cool stuff.

And I kind of realized about two seasons in that they weren't paying attention to any of it because it was just too much information. So I'm like, ‘What's my favorite, like what can permeate the whole program?’ So we just put one sheet in their little binders, and it was "Impose your will."

“Our intention is to impose your will on everything that we do. Defensively, we want to tell you what to do. Offensively, we'll try to tell the defense what to do.

“It’s not a bully mentality because we say ‘Bully the bullies.’ ”

Now comes the process of actually doing the work. Star point guard Bennett Stirtz of Drake, the Missouri Valley Conference’s Player of the Year this season, has said he’ll follow McCollum to Iowa. That would be a big start toward next season’s roster.

Seven Hawkeye players are in the NCAA transfer portal. McCollum asked for help in persuading Josh Dix, Pryce Sandfort and Cooper Koch to withdraw and remain Hawkeyes.

“Just myself, just a few players, just a few coaches, that's not what it takes,” McCollum said. “It takes everybody in here. It takes everybody in Iowa City. It takes everybody in the state of Iowa.

“One thing we can start with ...is see if we can get Pryce, Cooper, Josh, see if we can get them some support as well, maybe just text them or tweet them or anything like that and get them excited about coming back to the University of Iowa and making this thing grow. That would be good support to start.”

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