Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard Points Out Wild Turnover in College Football Coaching
The coaching carousel of the 2021-22 offseason was one of the wildest in recent memory, with 28 Division-I programs having made head coaching changes, with 13 of those being at the Power Five level.
Schools like Oklahoma, USC, Notre Dame, LSU, Florida, Oregon, and Miami are all on that list, making it a high-profile news story that we have all heard time and time again over the last few months.
Of course, half of those jobs came open as a result of guys like Lincoln Riley, Brian Kelly, and Mario Cristobal taking jobs elsewhere, but it made for an insane time period nonetheless.
However, as Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard points out, it wasn’t that long ago that similar turnover was seen at the FBS level.
In 2016, we saw several key hires at the FBS level that are still making an impact on their team going into 2022; Kalani Sitake at BYU, Matt Campbell at Iowa State, and Kirby Smart at Georgia being the most notable of the group to still be with their team.
During Matt Campbell’s time in Ames, the Cyclones have been to five straight bowl games, a program record at Iowa State. Campbell also led the Cyclones to their first-ever New Year’s Six Bowl Victory in the 2021 Fiesta Bowl with a 34-17 victory over the Oregon Ducks.
Campbell has built a “five-star culture” in Ames, and is a shining example of what athletic directors hope for when they make the crucial hire of a head football coach. Hopefully, going forward, more programs can look for the qualities that Pollard used to bring Campbell in back in 2016.
