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IOWA STATE HAS APPARENTLY HIRED BEAR BRYANT

The Cyclones have gone full-on Tim Brewster with their new head coach.

Iowa State recently hired Toledo head coach Matt Campbell to replace Paul Rhoads.  Campbell is a solid hire, an up-and-coming head coach with three nine-win seasons at Toledo -- a program he inherited from Tim Beckman -- who will only be 36 years old when next season kicks off.  There's plenty to trumpet about his head coaching record.

But Iowa State is gonna Iowa State, and so instead they did this:

HOLY SHIT IT'S WOODY HAYES RUN FOR YOUR LIVES

Oh wait, there's fine print that could only come from a graduate of Iowa State's law school.

fineprint

This, of course, is the most hilarious fine print of all time.  A full 138 of the 173 wins that Campbell is apparently claiming came when he was a player or assistant coach.  All five "National Championships" were at Mount Union.  As in, Division III Mount Union.  As in, where Campbell landed when he washed out after one season at Pitt and later worked as an assistant for two seasons.  Campbell once told a reporter that his experience at Pitt convinced him that "he wanted no part" of Division I football.  Which is good, because he's now at Iowa State, as far away from Division I football as one can get while still technically being in Division I.  (The reason Campbell left: Pitt went 2-9.  In other words, Iowa State might want to begin the search for his replacement now.)  Campbell never coached a single game for Mount Union, and yet he is claiming 83 of its wins as his own.

And as funny as the Division III National Championship and win claims are, they pale in comparison to the claimed "10 Conference Titles".  Campbell won six Ohio Athletic Conference championships at Mount Union as a player and assistant coach, but he has won exactly zero conference championships as an assistant or head coach anywhere else.  But Iowa State is gonna Iowa State, and so they are apparently counting five MAC Division Championships as "conference titles," despite the fact that four of those five teams split the division title and lost the tiebreaker -- meaning they didn't even play in the MAC Championship Game -- and a fifth, a 2003 Bowling Green team where Campbell was acting as a graduate assistant, lost by three touchdowns to Miami (Ohio).  In Ames, six conference championships in Division III counts as 10 CONFERENCE TITLES.  LOOK UPON MY WORKS YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR.

it's all quite silly, and quintessentially Iowa State.  After all, what other sort of attention-starved, ignore-the-facts-and-believe-the-hype program would do something this mind-blowingly stupid?  What other kind of coach would be so desperate to trump himself up that he would allow for such puffery? Who on earth would do such a --

Tim Brewster's record

At least the Matt Campbell infographic comes with that menacing, arms-folded stare.  How very determined of you, Mr. Schembechler.

So congrats to Iowa State on hiring the new Tim Brewster, a man with a resume so slight and ego so in need of heavy petting that he claims the accomplishments of other men as his own.  We're mere months away from exclamation-point-heavy tweets about Hayo Carpenter and 55-0 beatdowns from an angry Kirk Ferentz.  This is going to be fun.