Coaching and Linebackers Have Lead Cyclones to Success

On the eve of the 2009 college football season, new Iowa State Head Coach Paul Rhoads made a promise: we will be successful. Immediately. With the Cyclones having dropped the last 10 games of the 2008 season and the wounds from previous coach Gene Chizik having departed for a more prestigious job at Auburn, it was a difficult promise for the team's fan base to believe.

It didn't matter, though; Rhoads went right on ahead and did it. His squad eked out a winning record of 7-6 and went on to defeat Minnesota in the Insight Bowl. Four years later, Iowa State is off to a 3-0 start and is 13^th in the Nation in scoring defense, allowing an average of just 10.7 points per game.

What's more, they have not surrendered a touchdown in two weeks. They let up 16 points in the first quarter of Week 1 to Tulsa but have only allowed 16 more in the 11 quarters since.

How are they doing it? Rhoads' coaching and focus on winning is certainly at the center of Iowa State's success, but it's not the only reason they now find themselves on the other side of .500. A pair of linebackers recruited in the coach's first season, Jake Knott and A.J. Klein, have grown into one the top defensive duos in the nation.

''Coach Rhoads has been preaching since Day 1 about changing the culture. To be a part of that and to be the foundation of that is huge,'' Knott recently told the Associated Press.

After receiving interest from only a few schools coming out of their respective high schools, the two decided to come to Iowa State and were surprisingly inserted into the lineup in every game of their rookie season. They became starters in 2010 and have been recording turnovers and big hits ever since.

''It was kind of crazy how similar we were when we got here,'' Klein said. ''Our work ethic is alike. Our communication is alike, and I think that is because we're humble people. We come from humble beginnings. We weren't blown up. We were overlooked by a lot of teams and we wanted to prove ourselves.''

Prove themselves they have. As good as the two have been, though, it takes 11 men working together to have a successful defense. Luckily for Iowa State, the other nine on the field have followed in Klein and Knott's footsteps.

Presidential Candidates Campaigning for Iowa's Latino Vote

The race for the White House is heating up as it enters the home stretch, and the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney camps are scrambling to sway every possible voter to their cause. In Iowa, that means appealing to the growing Latino community. While the rest of the nation typically thinks of Iowa a state populated almost entirely by white farmers, the reality is that it has become more diverse over the last decade; the Washington Post says the state's Latino population grew an astounding 84 percent from 2000-2010.

It isn't known precisely how many Latinos will turn out to the Iowa booths on November 6, but the League of Latino United Citizens is running a registration drive that it hopes will result in a 15,000 increase in voters from the 2008 presidential election. That would translate to a total of 50,000 Latino voters in the state, comprising 3 percent of the total voting populace. Those numbers might not appear large enough to make a significant difference, but the most recent poll numbers suggest that the race is close enough that those votes could be crucial to winning Iowa.

“The Latino vote could be a decisive factor in the next election, at least here in Iowa,” Jose Zacarias, who emigrated there from Mexico and housed Obama campaign workers for two weeks in the last election, told the Post. “I see a lot of enthusiasm.”

President Obama rode two thirds of the state's Latino voters to victory in 2008. Romney's campaigners are doing everything possible to prevent that from happening again. The Republicans have been pushing the idea that Romney is better for the economy and can create more jobs, which they hope appeals to unemployed Iowa Latinos. Meanwhile, Obama's camp asserts that their program designed to help young illegal immigrants, the health care reform law and boosts to college aid are in Latinos' best interests.

It's too early to tell which candidate's policies will win over local Latinos or if doing so will be enough to push one candidate over the other in the total Iowa vote count, so both sides will continue to campaign heavily towards them in the coming weeks. Whatever happens, it should make for an exciting race.