Imagine showing people a picture of you and your friends, all with beer in hand, posing for a picture with Steve Alford, or even Bobby Knight. How sweet would that be?

After one of these esteemed coaches came to Ames, and after losing to the Cyclones, the coach heads out for a night on the town, looking to throw a few back with some of the students who had just been booing him no more than a couple of hours ago.

Let me clarify where I’m going with this. For those who haven’t seen or heard about it, a photo recently popped up on one of the University of Missouri’s basketball message boards. This photo shows apparently six Missouri students posing for a picture at a party with none other than ISU men’s basketball head coach Larry Eustachy. Most of the six students, from what you can see, have a beer in their hands.

Eustachy is decked out in his usual black Adidas mock turtleneck. The clock on the wall reads about two minutes after 2 o’clock. Many have assumed that this photo-op took place the night the ISU men lost to Missouri two weeks ago.

Now, it is almost guaranteed that this picture is fake. The first evidence toward the picture’s falsity is the trademark mock-tee. How often does Eustachy wear this outfit around outside of the basketball arena? Is he like Kenny from South Park — when he opens his closet all you see are mock turtlenecks and slacks? Probably not.

Whether the picture is valid, it definitely got me thinking: Wouldn’t it be sweet to actually get to party with Eustachy? I’ve heard the stories that he likes to hang out at some of the Campustown bars. I’ve heard he likes to hang out in the little dumpy places that only a few people actually attend. I’ve also heard that he doesn’t drink at all.

It’s very obvious that the ISU students love our head coach. Pretty much every time that he shoots up from his seat on the bench to get into an official’s ear, Hilton Coliseum is rumbling with the chant of “Lar-ry, Lar-ry.”

Eustachy is obviously very deserving of this love and respect of the fans. Before Mike Davis bum-rushed a referee during an Indiana game earlier this season, Eustachy was the only coach I’ve ever seen go absolutely ballistic on the officials after making an absolutely terrible call.

The call I am referring to is the double foul call against Paul Shirley and a Michigan State player in their Elite Eight meeting in the 2000 NCAA Tournament. Eustachy went medieval on the official, and rightfully so. That call cost Iowa State a Final Four appearance, and in my opinion, a national championship.

Getting back to this message board, most of the people who posted thought that the picture was either really funny, or they used it as a way to trash the coach.

When the photo made its way to the Cyclone Nation message board, pretty much everyone realized it was fake, but many reacted the same way I did. One person even went as far as saying that Eustachy is too good to hang out with the people in the photo.

When watching the coach storm up and down the sideline, yelling at the top of his lungs at either a referee or one of his own players after they mess up, you would think that Eustachy is just a total butthead. But you have to realize that he is an emotional person doing an emotional job. If you listen to the post-game show on the radio, once he has cooled down, he sounds like a real down-to-earth guy, even cracking an occasional joke.

Eustachy often catches heat for not being very fan- or media-friendly. I think it is just like with any other celebrity — if you catch them at the wrong time, they are likely to go off on you. I also don’t think it helps that he is in the same realm of attention as coaches like Dan McCarney and Bill Fennelly.

I covered Coach Mac’s Big 12 teleconferences this past season, and the guy is chattier than most people I know, even if every other word is “tremendous” or “outstanding.”

Then you have Fennelly, the women’s basketball coach, who may be one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, even if he’s only nice to me because I am in the media.

With two guys like these to compete with for personality awards, there is always going to be an outcast. I won’t hold it against him.

I think it would be cool for Eustachy, as well as the other coaches, to involve themselves in the social life of the university. Yes, there are the chances of troubles with some idiot who wants to talk smack, pick fights or whatever, but I guarantee that the majority of people in the bar would “escort” anyone who has a problem with him outside. And when I say escort, I mean beat the living hell out of them.

In conclusion, my friends and I are always looking for people to party with. So if you really do party, and your family doesn’t mind, then this is my extension of an invitation to Coach Eustachy. Let’s party.

Rick Kerr is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Des Moines.