Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series profiling ISU football coach Dan McCarney and his long coaching career. The article is based on an interview conducted Nov. 16.

ISU football coach Dan McCarney has seen a lot of football in his day.

From his days growing up in Iowa City to his playing days for the Iowa Hawkeyes (yes, those Hawkeyes), and through his 28-year coaching career, McCarney has seen the highs and the lows.

He played on the offensive line for a downtrodden Iowa program, got cut from the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and Denver Broncos, only to return to Iowa City to begin his coaching odyssey, which has seen three rebuilding jobs at three different universities.

The graduate of one of the most successful coaching staffs in the history of college football, he has found his home, somewhat ironically, at the rival of where his football life began.

McCarney said he never grew up with the mentality that he had to be a coach, but after a little encouragement from one of his coaches at Iowa, that mentality started to change.

“It was never something where I said, ‘Oh, I have to be a coach,” McCarney said. “I never really thought a whole lot about it until Ken [Stevensen] started to encourage me and talk to me about it. When he said, ‘You have to come back and get into coaching,’ then I thought maybe I could do it.”

ASSISTING IN A TURNAROUND

The year was 1977, and McCarney was about to catch his first break in the coaching business.

“I got cut in the NFL two years in a row after I got done with my playing career at Iowa,” McCarney said. “My position coach at Iowa was Ken Stevensen and he said, ‘You need to come back and get into coaching.’ He was the one that really encouraged me.”

McCarney took the bait his position coach set out and made the return to Iowa City, where he was a graduate assistant for two years under then Iowa coach Bob Commings.

It looked like McCarney’s coaching career was about to come to a premature end after Iowa fired Commings in 1979. Commings’s entire staff was let go with the hiring of then-North Texas coach Hayden Fry. Fry interviewed everyone from the previous staff and decided to take a chance on one of the young guns.

“Hayden came in after the staff was let go and interviewed all the guys,” McCarney said. “I was the youngest and the least experienced, but he gave me a chance. He took me on his staff and gave me the tight ends for $18,000, and the rest is history.”

McCarney apparently impressed, because when the position of defensive line coach opened up the next spring, Fry promoted McCarney, a position he would hold for 11 years until leaving Iowa for Wisconsin.

During McCarney’s time at both Iowa and Wisconsin, he was part of staffs that engineered arguably two of the greatest turnarounds in college football history. He helped rescue Iowa from 19 consecutive losing seasons with an 8-4 Big Ten Championship season. As defensive coordinator under fellow former Hawkeye Barry Alvarez, the Badgers went from 1-10 to 10-1-1 and a Rose Bowl championship in just four seasons.

After arriving in Wisconsin with Alvarez, McCarney had to return to Iowa City and take on Iowa in his first year – an experience McCarney said was one of the most surreal he’s ever been a part of.

“That was strange because I’d been there for 19 years as a player and a coach,” McCarney said. “That trip kind of broke the ice. It was weird standing on the opposing sideline. I grew up going to Iowa games, sneaking in when I was real young, then I used my mom’s season tickets she got working through the dental school. Then I got recruited. So the first time back was really strange. Having to come back and use the visitor’s locker room – which was our locker room as a freshman – that was strange. That was really strange.”

TAKING THE REINS

In 1995, after five years at Wisconsin, Iowa State came calling and McCarney answered. McCarney accepted the head job of a seemingly hopeless situation at Iowa State, where he was to take over a program that had only three winning seasons in its previous 16, and was coming off of a winless season.

But it was the right job at the right time for McCarney, who took the challenge with open arms and set out to build a program, even if there were those who told him that the situation was a coaching graveyard.

“I always had great respect for the university and the athletic program here,” he said. “Obviously basketball had a lot of success, but it was a chance to return to my home state. Once you have revived and reconstructed a football program – and I had a chance to be part of two of them, two of the most dramatic in college football – then you get that opportunity; you know you can do it. I thrive on challenges and when people say you can’t do it, then it’s kind of fun to make them look silly.”

Nothing surprised McCarney upon his arrival in Ames. He said he knew he would have to be in for the long haul to win with the Cyclones. With two rebuilding jobs under his belt, McCarney set out for his third challenge, in which he said he saw both similarities and differences.

“The biggest difference was the facilities were in the dark ages,” he said. “We stepped into Iowa and they still had a great stadium and a lot of things in place. They weren’t top-drawer or anything, but there was still a few things in place.

“The first day we went into Wisconsin, they had some of the best facilities in the country – the indoor facility, the locker rooms and a stadium that sat 70,000 people. We got here, and other than a good, solid stadium – obviously the smallest in the Big 12 but still a solid stadium – the facilities were a joke,” he said. “But a lot of the things were there. Fan interest was down, there was a real shortage of Division-I football players. There were nine seniors in my first class, and my first team meeting had 62 players and this was a Division-I program. Even all of those guys didn’t make it through the first year.

“I knew it was going to be a long process. This is a state – unlike Wisconsin with one major university – where we have Iowa and Iowa State and a small population with fewer recruits. We had two schools – Big Ten and then-Big 8 – that are fighting for fans, support, money, recruits and walk-ons, but in the end, if you get it done, it’s one of the most gratifying things you can ever accomplish.”

Winning recruiting battles with Iowa, however, would be something that would have to wait until later. First, McCarney had to earn credibility with his players and change the attitude within the program.

“[Changing the attitude] is tough and it doesn’t come the first day,” he said. “[The players] didn’t know much about me other than I was at Iowa for 36 years and they didn’t like that. But I came from Wisconsin where we won the Rose Bowl and went from 1-10 to 10-1, so hopefully there was some credibility there. It just takes time; it’s a day-to-day process earning mutual respect from players and the staff.

“But the most important thing you have to do is build relationships,” he said. “You’ve got to get to know your kids; they’ve got to trust you and believe in you. You’re being evaluated – just like I’m evaluating those kids, they’re evaluating me as a coach – as a leader. Is he a man of integrity, honesty? Is there phoniness? Is he going to tell it like it is? Is he going to sugarcoat it? Can we really follow this plan and be successful? All of those things are part of the evaluation on both ends.”

TURNAROUND OF HIS OWN

The battle to change the attitude at Iowa State was an uphill climb, with McCarney going just 6-27 in his first three years as head coach of the Cyclones. McCarney won three games in his first year, but he didn’t feel the tide start to turn until year four.

“To really turn the corner, though, was the first time we beat Iowa in Iowa City when we were nearly a 30-point underdog,” McCarney said. “After that, I think anyone close to the program – coaches, fans – saw that this thing is being done right. The series had been dominated for 15 years by one school – we’d been blown out the year before here, but to go over there and win that game like that was one of the most important victories we’ve had.”

McCarney’s first win came in his first game with the Cyclones, the first time Iowa State had experienced victory in 13 games.

So memorable and important were those two victories that he still has a football commemorating the victory over Ohio in his office, along with a framed picture of the Des Moines Register proclaiming the ISU upset, along with a copy of the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa’s student newspaper, with a headline reading “16 straight.”

Even after the first win over Iowa in 1998 – the beginning of a five-game winning streak over the rival Hawkeyes – it wasn’t until 2000 that Iowa State pulled out a winning record. In that year, Iowa State finished with a 9-3 record and an Insight.com Bowl victory. It was the first bowl victory in the history of Iowa State and a school record for wins in a season.

Since 2000, Iowa State has won at least seven games every year except 2003, been to three more bowls and will play in the Houston Bowl on Dec. 31. And in 2004, McCarney’s Cyclones shared the Big 12 North Championship with Colorado, the first conference championship of any kind in 92 years, but McCarney isn’t slowing down.

“There’s a lot of things left undone,” he said. “There’s a lot of things I want to do here. We’ve put our heart and soul into this thing and there’s a lot of things out there we want to accomplish that we haven’t accomplished, and yet we’re really proud of what we’ve done and where we’ve taken the program. Every season we get a chance to write new chapters and take this program places it has never been. You just stop and think this is all a part of the legacy of this program.”