What started off as a forced working relationship has developed into a friendship.

After coming to Ames last November, ISU football coach Gene Chizik was greeted by Tom Kroeschell, associate athletic director for media relations. While Chizik was recruiting his staff, Kroeschell bonded with the new head coach.

“He comes in here and knows virtually no one here,” Kroeschell said. “He’s trying to get a staff hired, recruiting going, and so you get to know him early on simply because he’s all there is to the football program.”

While Kroeschell had heard about Chizik’s success at Auburn and Texas, he knew little about him as a person.

His experience working with the new coach only affirmed what athletic director Jamie Pollard had said about Chizik when he hired him to replace 12-year head coach Dan McCarney last November.

In a press release, he said, “Gene understands what is necessary to be a CEO of a football program at this level.”

To Kroeschell that assessment was accurate.

“I think he also has a very strong, clear vision of what has to happen for the program to be successful,” Kroeschell said.

For Kroeschell, learning that Chizik was exactly the same person in front of the cameras as he is behind was reassuring.

“My colleagues could tell you in great lengths about the prima donnas they work with, the coaches whose outward public persona is nothing like what they are behind the scenes,” Kroeschell said.

Texas head coach Mack Brown said Chizik is “a perfect gentleman,” but “deals with people in a tough, direct and up-front manner.”

For members outside of the ISU football program, that attitude was also recognized.

“He’s very serious and he’s a disciplinarian, but he’s a great guy,” said Cyclones broadcaster John Walters. “I’ve enjoyed getting to know him a lot.”

Senior wide receiver Todd Blythe said he was greeted with the new coach’s winning attitude along with a bigger playbook.

“You can just sense the intensity,” Blythe said. “I would say the biggest change in the new coaching staff is that it just feels like a fresh start, it feels like we’ve got a new light.”

Chizik said he now speeds to work every day, not only to work football, but to be around his new home in Ames.

“It’s been awesome,” said Chizik of his time in Ames. “I just look around every day and I’m just living a dream.”

Having sat through arrivals of former coach Jim Walden and McCarney, Kroeschell said it’ll take time to build on the relationship they already have.

“That takes time and I think people are just now getting to see what Coach Chizik is like, that he really is a humble person who has a self-deprecating sense of humor,” Kroeschell said.

“It forces a great relationship when you’re not treated like a serf.”