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Tom Campbell The ability to keep the fans engaged is critical to coaches surviving a slow start. That will be a challenge for Coach Darrell Hazell. the field." When asked recently about what it was like when he started at Iowa and any comparisons he can make to what Hazell is facing, Ferentz answered it in the manner he coaches: Calculating and cautious. "Whatever you walk into, that's what you walk into," Ferentz said in late November. "You try to do your best each and every day. "As far as timelines go, I never really thought much about that other than you're just trying to maximize every day and try to get your players and your staff to do the same thing," Ferentz said. "Every situation is different. I don't think there's a set time. "The only thing I'd say generally is I don't think you can evaluate anything program-wise in less than five years. I think you have to let people get their programs established, their thoughts established and then give them a chance to implement those things." Hazell has experienced a disastrous season before, doing so as an assistant at Rutgers. In his two years on Greg Schiano's staff in 2001 and 2002, the Scarlet Knights won just three games. Schiano turned it around after Hazell had moved on to Ohio State as an assistant, but Hazell knows what it feels like to struggle. "That experience can't hurt him," Haddy said. "It is important for guys to know what it feels like to win and lose 12 IllustrateD volume 24, issue 3 when trying to rebuild something." Negative, Impatient times Though Ferentz said it takes five years to evaluate a program, fans in the second decade of the 21st Century rarely possess that level of patience. "If you look historically, there might have been a lot of really good coaches who might not have survived," Ferentz said. "Right now, we live in a quick-trigger society. Think about a guy like John Wooden, (who didn't win a NCAA championship until his 15th year at UCLA), he wouldn't have survived. "You just have to give things time and really evaluate it. It goes the other way, too. Some people come out of the gate real fast and lose steam after a couple years. When you evaluate, you have to give it some time and evaluate it, not just five days, five weeks or five months." Alvarez, who has been athletic director at Wisconsin since 2005, says you have to be patient, but you should see progress by the third year of a program. "You may not see as many wins in the third year as you like, but you should be able to tell what direction things are going by then," Alvarez said. "In the third year, you are now playing with your players and it is easy to see if the guys have bought in and things are all moving forward. If they aren't by then, you have some serious questions." f