Bruce Van De Velde was hired at Iowa State in November of 2000 at the peak of Cyclone athletic success.

The men’s basketball team had come eyelashes short of making the Final Four, the women ballers were in the middle of a five-year stretch of 25-plus win seasons, Cael Sanderson was on his way to a third national title and the football team had clinched their first bowl-eligible season in more than 20 years.

It was an athletic program on the rise, and the Cyclones had hired the perfect man to head the department, an ISU graduate with great seasoning.

Van De Velde was all smiles — until he looked under the hood of Cyclone athletics. Underneath the facade of wins and Big 12 championships was an athletic budget hemorrhaging money and a department struggling to maintain its stable of young, vigorous coaches.

Choices had to be made. Pay Dan McCarney, Larry Eustachy and Bill Fennelly or keep baseball? Improve facilities for the revenue-generating sports or cut loose money-draining programs like men’s swimming?

It was a no-win situation. If Van De Velde wrote a memoir, it should be titled, “Where is option C?”

Slowly, Cyclone supporters got over the losses of baseball and swimming thanks to Sanderson, Jamaal Tinsley, Seneca Wallace and, overall, more wins.

Then came the hellish plague of 2003, which would become the worst year in Cyclone athletic history.

In March, the voice of the Cyclones, and the godfather of athletics, Pete Taylor died. Both basketball teams struggled to regain form, capped by an ISU loss to Iowa at Hilton in the NIT. The football team lost 10 straight miserable games in the fall.

All of this was overshadowed by “As Larry Eustachy Turns.” We all remember the vivid details and embarrassing attention. It got so bad you couldn’t turn on ESPN, the radio or read the paper without a shot at Iowa State. Again, Van De Velde was stuck with a no-win situation.

He chose to cut his ties with Eustachy and the backlash was immediate. The subsequent coaching search was a disaster, as the once nationally prominent Cyclones were turned down by coaches from Fresno State, Wyoming, Creighton and even Chattanooga.

Iowa State settled smartly on Wayne Morgan, but the damage had been done to Van De Velde’s job security.

At that point, Van de Velde could have hired a staff of John Wooden, Dean Smith and Phil Jackson and portions of the Cyclone faithful would still be calling for his head.

Since then, Van De Velde has done nothing but good for Cyclone sports despite minimal support from boosters and the ISU administration. He locked up McCarney, Morgan and Fennelly to long-term deals, and spearheaded campaigns to build necessary facilities.

He managed the smallest budget in the Big 12 superbly, even creating a budget surplus. Unfortunately for Van De Velde, the writing has been on the wall for months, and he could do nothing to erase it.

It would have been easy and probably encouraged for Van De Velde to give up earlier, but he stayed on to put Iowa State in position to take athletics to new levels.

He now has his option C: Exit with grace and Iowa State’s best interest in mind.