With a salary of $625,000, head football coach Dan McCarney won’t be eating any ramen noodles any time soon.

For most, that kind of money would set them up for at least 10 years. But as the ISU football team has soared higher than anyone thought possible, talk of a raise has surfaced.

A raise?! With that kind of salary?!

Yes, and it’s a good idea.

McCarney deserves the same type of rewards as, say, the CEO of a company who is ninth-best nationally at what it does.

It’s the same principle: Produce results, get rewarded.

It’s not just a raise for getting a team to a point where it’s recognized around the nation. The pay hike should be the result of seven-plus years of developing individuals, as well as a program.

Although some may see it as corny, Zach Butler, whose time is running out as a senior, put it best at the press conference this week.

“What I’ve learned from him, I’m going to take for the rest of my life,” Butler said. “I know that I’m going to be a successful person because I was involved in this thing with coach McCarney and I learned how to work.”

He used words like “blue collar,” “honest” and “high character” to define McCarney.

Ask a fan of Cyclone football in the mid-’90s for a description of McCarney and you’d get four-letter words much different from those.

As McCarney fielded questions about his future, he reflected back to his past. He recalled a game at Wyoming in 1997 which Iowa State lost 56-10.

“I start coming off the field after the game and this guy got right in my face. I mean, he got right in my face and he was screaming; he was spitting in my face when he was screaming,” McCarney said with a grin. “He yelled ‘Don’t you know anything?’ and that old Yogi Berra thing popped in my head. I said, ‘Sir, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t even suspect anything.’ “

Anybody that can come up with that, for a guy like that, after losing his 19th game in 24 tries in blowout fashion, is someone special.

Pete Taylor, the Voice of the Cyclones, spoke about McCarney at groundbreaking for the new practice facility. He said McCarney is an inspiration to everyone who works in the Jacobson Building.

It’s not hard to see how.

The man motivates me, and I’m just a stinking reporter.

That’s everything McCarney stands for. Not just motivation, but the intensity, the courage to stick with what was once a losing program and the fire in his eyes as he walks the sidelines every Saturday.

When you think about it, a pay raise isn’t that crazy. It’s obvious that the football team’s success this season has generated more revenue than was expected two months ago.

At least seven ISU football games will be televised this year and the athletic department stands to make more than $1 million in TV revenue alone in 2002.

Attendance for a home game against an opponent other than Iowa or Nebraska eclipsed 50,000 last weekend and is likely to stay around that level, meaning more money from ticket sales and more concession sales.

And if a team’s progress is a reflection of the coach, it’s only natural to take care of those who got you there — before they go elsewhere.

McCarney has said he loves the program, the university and everything else that is Cyclone.

“The people have been very loyal to me here and I can definitely see myself being at Iowa State for a long time,” McCarney said.

But the fact is, money can change minds.

Teams with long-standing tradition of success have that money, and if their own team slips, they won’t be afraid to use it.

A report by USA Today last year had 22 Division I football coaches, including five from the Big 12, making more than $1 million. Bob Stoops, who will lead Oklahoma against the Cyclones Saturday, makes more than three times as much as McCarney. Even Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz current deal has him at $910,000 every season.

If anything, it seems a bigger deal for McCarney is past due.

The $2 million question was posed to McCarney Tuesday. What would you do, coach, if someone put that kind of cash on the table?

“There’s a lot of personal reasons why I want to stay at Iowa State … with my children four and a half hours away, my parents two hours away and lifelong friends in the state of Iowa,” McCarney said to reporters who had perked up their ears. “I do have a family to take care of, but I’m not out hunting or looking.”

He went on to say that he’ll never worry about the next job, or what might happen in the future. McCarney said he’s just tried to do the best he could with the job he had.

“I just trust the administration is going to take care of everybody here, and that’s top to bottom,” he said.

Get out the pocketbook.

Jeff Raasch

is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Odebolt.