AMES, Iowa—On the surface, Colorado coach Dan Hawkins and Iowa State coach Gene Chizik seem to have little in common.
It’s tough to imagine the mild-mannered Chizik jumping out of an airplane from 10,000 feet, ranting about the difference between the Big 12 and intramurals or quoting Yoda—yes, that Yoda—in a blog post.
What Chizik and Hawkins do share is a first-hand knowledge of how tough it is to win in the Big 12. Like Hawkins, whose Buffaloes finished 2-10 in 2006, Chizik is in the early stages of his attempt to lift the Cyclones (2-8, 1-5 Big 12) out of the conference cellar.
The coaches will face against each other for the first time Saturday, when Colorado visits Iowa State.
Chizik and the Cyclones, who snapped a six-game losing streak with a 31-20 win over Kansas State last week, would love to follow Colorado’s blueprint next season. The Buffs (5-5, 3-3) are one win from bowl eligibility after finishing tied for last in the Big 12 North in 2006.
“They have been getting progressively better and they have battled some teams and pushed some teams to the wall and just weren’t able to get it done,” Hawkins said. “But they did against K-State.”
Colorado’s journey back to national prominence hasn’t been smooth. The Buffs seemed to turn the corner when they shocked No. 4 Oklahoma 27-24 on Sept. 29, but they have lost three of four since, including a 55-10 thumping at the hands of No. 7 Missouri last week.
The loss led Hawkins—whose affinity for extreme sports and rousing statements are well known—to apologize to fans on his weekly blog, “Blogging with Hawk.”
“That was a tough deal. If you’re associated with the program, you walk away from that thing just going, ‘Wow, that was a tough day at the ole ball park,'” Hawkins told reporters this week.
It was a different story for Chizik. The Cyclones had been making incremental improvements since getting blown out 56-3 by Texas at home, and it all came together against Kansas State.
The Cyclones recovered a fumble on the opening kickoff and later scored, setting the tone for the afternoon. Led by the quarterback duo of Bret Meyer and freshman Austen Arnaud, Iowa State notched a season-high for points against a Big 12 opponent and converted two Kansas State turnovers into touchdowns.
The Cyclones lost hope for a bowl bid long ago, but they’ve gotten better as the Big 12 season has progressed.
“I feel like our kids are responding to what we’re trying to coach. We have a long way to go in so many areas … but as a team we functioned well enough to win,” Chizik said. “I just thought it was a total team win.”
Meyer is third among active quarterbacks in total offense with 10,136 yards, but Arnaud is Iowa State’s future. The Cyclones used Arnaud for about 20 plays last week, and they plan to keep doing so the rest of the way.
Arnaud, the 2005 Iowa high school player of the year, is being groomed as Meyer’s replacement. They both have similar styles, but Arnaud, at 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, has the potential to develop into a stronger rushing threat than Meyer.
“It’s definitely going to help me. It’s going to make me that much better next year, when I come out for the first game, that I have experience, and it was a ballgame that was close and I wasn’t in there just getting reserve minutes,” Arnaud said.
Hawkins said in his blog this week that the Buffs are determined to “rise again” after last week’s debacle. He even quoted a line from Yoda, the fictional Jedi master from the “Star Wars” movies: “Do or do not, there is no try.”
With Iowa State and Nebraska—teams with a combined 2-10 Big 12 record—left on the schedule, Colorado has a decent shot at reaching bowl eligibility just two years into Hawkins’ stint in Boulder.
Hawkins isn’t looking at the rest of the season that way. He still believes the sky is the limit for the Buffs, and that’s the direction he wants to keep pushing toward.
“The bottom line is that we need to play better, we need to coach better, and we need to do better,” Hawkins said. “There are ramifications to that in itself, but if we do have hopes and dreams and aspirations of doing something in a bowl game we need to do a much better job these next three weeks.”
