100 Things Cyclone Fans Should Forget Before They Die: Larry Eustachy Parties At Mizzou

From the Managing Editor: Congratulations fellow Cyclones. You’ve made it to the end. This article is the 100th and final entry in our 100 Things Cyclone Fans Need to Forget Before They Die series. We hope you enjoyed and hated this series as much as we did. We took you through all most some of the bad coaches, bad players, bad recruits, bad games, and bad calls that are scattered throughout Cyclone football history. The series was never about complaining about any of those things (except the flags at K-State last year...never forget), but rather to reflect on our rocky past, so we can truly appreciate where this program is headed.

With that in mind, let’s get to our 100th Thing You Need to Forget Before You Die, and one half our namesake.

Larry Eustachy is one of the all-time greats to coach basketball at Iowa State so far. He led Iowa State to big wins, an Elite Eight run and a Big 12 regular season and tournament championship in 2000. He was primed for continue success in Ames, until it all came crashing down.

It was 2002 and Iowa State was struggling. The Cyclones headed to Missouri on January 22nd to face the Tigers, where they would fall by a score of 64-59. Estachy was quoted after the game as saying he was as disappointed as he has ever been, and that his team needed to get tougher on the basketball court.

The next day, photos began to surface on the Missouri fan message boards of Eustachy partying with six college aged students from Missouri. The next day, then-Iowa State Athletic Director Bruce Van De Velde confirmed the photos were real, but opined that they weren’t a big deal. Van De Velde stated that Larry Eustachy was a great guy, and if someone asked for a photo or autograph, he was the type of guy that was going to do so.

Early on in March, the partying saga buzz began to grow. A Missouri student would call into the Des Moines register with photos of Eustachy kissing college girls while he was partying. The student would go on to give the Des Moines Register the photos for free in hopes to let the people of Iowa know of Eustachy’s actions, and let everyone know they were wrong.

In April, the Des Moines Register would put together an article with the photos. Eustachy himself would admit to wrongdoings in the past, but it didn’t seem to help his cause. Iowa State would eventually suspend Eustachy, before the troubled coach agreed to resign.

Des Moines Register

Eustachy’s ability to coach and the accomplishments he had as head coach won’t soon be forgotten. How his career in Ames came to an end, and the bad light on Iowa State University, is something we should be forgetting.