blackfootbengal
Active member
I know there are parents and players who look in on the forum every once in a while. This is for you that do. I recognize that having the coach who recruited you and your son released is a traumatic experience. What all of you need to recognize is life goes on. Russell Hill, I. Burel, Sean Rutton, Phillip Areas, and Jeff Tuaa all went through the same thing four years ago; all were red-shirt freshmen Lewis’s last year. The one thing you cannot do is over react to the situation. Give the new coach a chance, get to know him and his staff before you make any rash decisions. Recognize that those of us on the board do recognize that the administration was not always as supportive of football as we believed they should, but they were going through some tough times themselves. Also recognize that Zamberlin was not an innocent in what went on. Money games are a fact of live at this level. Every school in the Big Sky plays them. Portland State and Eastern Washington have played as many as three money games and almost always play two as the rest of the Big Sky except Montana does. Using that as leverage to get a two year extension was in my mind ridiculous. The last two years the team has traveled to a couple of games by bus, do you really think that ISU is the only one who travels by bus to closer games. How did you think Northern Colorado got here two years ago when they beat us? This is just one example of Zamberlin making an excuse, not even a good one. The real issue with Zamberlin’s time here at ISU is his inability to retain the kids he recruited. While I personally feel he did a terrible job of getting kids in his first two years, we will never know because the vast majority of them are not here to show what they could do. Of his first recruiting class only four are with the team now; Kelvin Miller, Kelvin Krosch, David Tyler, and J.T. Albers. I’m sure there must be more, but I can only remember one JC kid who played out of this class. His second class was worst; the only players I can remember from that group are A.J. Storm, Rumble, and Clayson. This class also demonstrated the failure of both Zamberlin’s staff and the academic group for the Athletic department. This is the class Holmsley came out of. Where a kid shows up, is practicing and the day of the game Academics show up telling him he cannot play. While I feel the majority of this falls on academics back, Zamberlin and Co. were responsible as well. To emphasis my point; note the list of kids who are from Lewis’s last class. There are five in that group. Do you realize we have 11 seniors and five are kids Lewis recruited? As a guess I would say that 75 percent of JC kids we recruited over the last four years did not make it to the field. JC kids are recruited for an instant fix; not getting these kids to the field has impacted depth every year Zamberlin has been here. The reality; there is not one person who is a regular on this forum who wanted Zamberlin to fail. We all wanted the best for the program and waited four years to see what would happen. It became more evident each year that Zamberlin lacked skills as a head coach. He and his staff were unorganized always waiting for someone else to step up and take charge to get things done and did not improve with experience. Now it is time to move on and see what Kramer can do. I believe I speak for everyone on the board in hoping that you and your sons will be with us in the future.
