Khaki pants for the Iowa State coaching staff! We’re the perfect swingers now, baby. Scrap the elastic waistband look and we are going to look sweet. (Although I understand the practicality and versatility of the amazing stretchy substance.)

Now if I only had answers to our on-the-field problems.

I’m no coach, but we made so many bad decisions Saturday, I think the first was as costly as any. We won the coin toss, and elected to defer our choice to the second half. Why not take the ball right from the start? Why let Iowa start the game with the seven-point lead? Did we think it was going to be a game in the second half? Did it matter we got the ball first after halftime, when we were down 29?

I thought it was the worst decison we’ve made since last year in overtime against Wyoming when we elected to choose the endzone we wanted to play at, instead of choosing to play defense first so that we would know how many points we needed to score.

The only other coaching-type move I made was filing a missing person’s report to see if we can find a running game, oh, and a defense.

Saturday, ISU was held to minus-11 yards rushing, and has only 132 yards on 129 attempts this season.

That figures to 1.023 yards per carry. In feet: 3.069 per carry. In inches: 36.837 per carry.

That’s not good. If we need to, let’s buy one. I just bought a life the other day at K-Mart, so why not try shopping for a running game? They have almost everything.

When I think about ISU football, I remember the first play I ever witnessed as a freshman. I walked into the game just after kickoff, and watched us procede to take the snap from the 20-yard line, pitch the ball in the not-so-general direction of our running back and we wound up with the ball on our own 3-yard line.

That was the infamous Jim Walden 0-10-1 season. This year, with our coaching history in overtime, we don’t have a tie to fall back on.

That play sums up our team then and now. We’re going nowhere fast — about 36.837 inches per play.

The hottest debate right now is whether this current team is worse than that one. It’s close. I’m not sure.

I’ve heard that fans have not given up on the Cyclones. Really?

Would a steady stream of people file out of the stadium with six minutes to go in the second quarter of an intrastate rivalry if we had any confidence? No.

Wouldn’t someone have been able to predict with a straight face that the Cyclones would beat the Hawkeyes? No one did.

Wouldn’t someone have been able to listen to that prediction with a straight face? No one could.

Wouldn’t someone predict that we will win more than one game this season? Thus far, no one has.

Would I consider shaving my head and eyebrows if I really thought we could manage to win one game? No. (My hair is no problem, but the eyebrows are.)

Should fans expect to get their money back after watching Saturday’s game? I would.

Should fans consider skipping the rest of the home games? I would give it a thought if I weren’t a sports editor. (Actually, I did manage to lose my press pass after the game. So I might be done going to them. And no, it wasn’t on purpose.)

This is my last column pertaining to ISU football this season. There is nothing left to talk about. From now on it would be redundant (and previously said, too.)

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Drew Harris is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Peosta.