Ute Coaches and Their ISU Roots

[Skippy]

A for a program that's struggled, ISU has a pretty impressive coaching tree: Whittingham, Christensen, Dave Anderson at Wisconsin, Marvin Lewis with the Bengals, James Franklin at Penn State and Derek Mason at Vandy, to name a few.

It was Brian McNeeley's decision to fire Kyle Whittingham that led to the 66-0, "Revenge of the Whittinghams" slaughter back in 1994. I'm sure Kyle's realized many times over what an inadvertant favor McNeeley did him 20 years ago.

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[SLCBengal]

Here's a "Throwback Thursday" photo of ISU's staff, with Whittingham, Christensen, and Ludwig...

 

[PBP]

Brad:

Yea that was a bizarre situation with McNeely accusing Whittingham and I think another coach of "trying to turn the team against him" and trying to "usurp" his authority.

Fired them both in mid season although I think both those coaches were paid through the end of the year.

I was working at channel 6 and the players told me about what was going on.

Then you had the religious lawsuit controversy brought by three players against McNeely who was making all pre game religious services mandatory. They brought me the team itineraries which clearly stated that. Showed them on-air. I think AD Randy Hoffman worked out a compromise which included an apology and the suit was eventually dropped.

I liked Brian but there were times he was a little different in a John Thompson kind of way! LOL.

PBP