Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | fall 2007

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GROUND CONTROL
NEW HEAD FOOTBALL COACH GENE CHIZIK HITS THE GROUND RUNNING WITH A CORPORATE COACHING PHILOSOPHY

Gene Chizik has his feet on the ground.

For the first time in 21 years, the Clearwater, Fla., native who was named Iowa State’s 29th head football coach on Nov. 27, 2006, will be standing squarely in the thick of it all when his team takes the field this fall.

“I’ve always been in the press box. I’ve always seen the game from a different perspective,” says Chizik, who’s been the defensive coordinator at Stephen F. Austin, Central Florida, Auburn, and Texas. “Calling a game as a defensive coordinator, it’s always been important for me to have clarity of mind and no craziness. Now, down [on the field] it gets a little hectic. Instead of having 45 guys and five coaches that I’m in charge of, now I’ve got 13 or 14 coaches and all 113 players and all the decisions that go along with that. You’ve got to be on top of your game all the time to be in the middle of what’s going on with your team.”

With his feet planted, Chizik expects the rest of his body to follow. He says he knows that a successful head coach has his priorities grounded in what’s most important.

“Probably the best advice I was given was from my good friend who’s not even in the coaching world,” Chizik says. “He’s the CEO of a company, and he told me, ‘Make sure that you pay attention to the things that are really important.’ In other words, don’t get lost in the peripheral things that are only kind of important. You can do that – you can get sidetracked by all these little issues that are going on out there when the important thing is what? Your players and your coaches. At the end of the day for a CEO, the question is ‘Are you making money?’ Here, it’s basically the same thing: ‘Are you doing things that are going to help you win?’”

Chizik, who also likened himself to a CEO at his hiring press conference last fall, points to the hiring of his staff as the critical component in putting the Cyclones in a position to win under his leadership. He has let go of some of the control over X’s and O’s and put complete trust in his assistant coaches.

“That’s why we hire really great people,” he says. “The bottom line is that I can’t micro-manage everything, and I’m not going to micro-manage everything when it comes to football. When I was an assistant I didn’t want someone breathing down my neck all the time; just let me do it the way I know how to do it. And that’s the way I want them to coach. I can’t do it all.”

What Chizik does plan to do is take over all responsibility for discipline, player accountability, external relations, and other “outside stuff,” as he calls it, boiling down the assistant coaches’ job descriptions to two simple tasks: coach and recruit.

“I’ve been around some great coaches,” Chizik says. “I’ve been around some coaches that I thought were great football coaches, but discipline killed them. I’ve been around some coaches who were great disciplinarians, but some of the football stuff slipped. I know this program will be successful, not because of me, but because of me and the guys I hired. Discipline will never be an issue here; consistency will never be an issue here. We put pressure on the players to be good on and off the field. That’s all done by me, and that’s not going to change.”

While he prides himself on being a strict disciplinarian in the locker room, Chizik says he doesn’t intimidate or impress anyone when he walks through the front door to his house at night. Being a husband and a father, he says, is the only role he plays that truly matters. And while he admits it’s difficult to check his coach hat at the door, it’s a definitive cut he makes each day.

“My daughters sometimes try to accuse me of treating them like my players, but at home I really just hang out and am ‘Fun Dad.’ I do not want to walk through the door at the end of the day and have my kids and wife get the worst part of me. It’s just a conscious choice that you make. You make a decision to be a father or not, it’s that simple.”

Chizik says his decision to come to Iowa State was based mostly on the fact that he knew it would be good for his family – his wife, Jonna; his twin daughters, Landry and Kennedy; and his son, Cally.
“What we have figured out is that there are just really great people here,” he says. “Moving up here has been fun.”

Chizik says he admires the humility and modesty of Iowans – it’s a “breath of fresh air,” he says – but worries that it occasionally translates into a tendency
to sell themselves short.

“One of the things that struck me when I got here is that people say thank you for coming,” Chizik says. “Sometimes people say, ‘I can’t believe you came here.’ I see it the opposite. I see it as, ‘Thank you for letting me come here.’”

About the Writer | Kate Bruns is the ISU Alumni Association's associate director of communications.