So this is friend-to-friend or man-to-man, whatever you prefer.

I’m not saying the friendship Eustachy and I have is anything like the buddy-buddy deal he has with the guys who regularly show up at his practices and hang onto every word he says about his players and such rival coaches as Eddie Sutton, Quin Snyder and Steve Alford.

I got to know a little about Eustachy when I covered his team in his break-in season of 1998-99 at Iowa State. Even though he had such players as Marcus Fizer and Martin Rancik, it wasn’t a particularly good year.

The Cyclones finished 15-15 overall and 6-10 in the Big 12—the first time in Eustachy’s nine seasons as a major-college coach that he didn’t have a winning record. But I knew better times were ahead because Fizer, who averaged 18 points, and Rancik, who averaged 10.3, were only sophomores.

When I was lucky enough to find Eustachy in his office, he’d be looking at videotape of games that illustrated how much work his players had to do to improve. Generally, it was a frustrating season that ended quickly when Colorado beat the Cyclones, 69-61, in the opening round of the Big 12 tournament at Kansas City.

Even though it was a tough season, I had a smooth relationship with Eustachy. I’d attend his practices, watch and listen as he tried to make his players better, then observe him after games he felt his team could—or should—have won.

He didn’t particularly like it when I wrote a story about declining attendance at Hilton Coliseum. But coaches don’t like every story any reporter writes.

The attendance problems at Iowa State actually began when Tim Floyd coached there, and continued under Eustachy.

"That’s why they fire coaches," Eustachy said, referring to stories about lagging attendance.

But attendance at games is obviously not the only reason coaches are fired, as all of us know.

But there were plenty of disappointments—specifically the 74-53 defeat at Iowa that was followed by 75-61 drubbing at the hands of Lute Olson’s Arizona team in something called the Las Vegas Shootout, and the consecutive losses to Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas to start the Big 12 schedule.

The games at Texas and Kansas were three days apart. As I recall, Eustachy was having some personnel issues at the time—a player had quit or was threatening to quit, and another was joining the team--and I needed to find out what was going on.

I had arrived in Kansas City from Austin, Texas, and would be in Lawrence, Kan., the next day. I called Eustachy from Kansas City and finally reached him. He already was in Lawrence.

"What time did you get in?" I asked him.

"About 2:30 a.m.," he said.

"What were you doing?" I asked.

"Driving around," he said.

I made a lot of trips to Ames that winter because I found that was sometimes the only way I could reach Eustachy. He wasn’t—and still isn’t—the best at returning telephone calls, even to friends.

I recall one particularly frustrating experience on Christmas Day. One of his players had been arrested, and I wanted to get a comment from Eustachy about it. I had his unlisted home number, and I’ll bet I called it a dozen times and left messages before he called me at about 6 p.m.

That was soon enough for me to get a story into the first edition, but if he’d only known all I needed was 10 minutes of his time, we could have wrapped all of that up by noon.

As far as I know, he still doesn’t. Although a guy like Alford has regularly-scheduled press conferences and also does teleconferences with reporters during the season, Eustachy does neither.

Iowa State tried to get him to do occasional press conferences a few years ago, but it didn’t work.

I accompanied him into the interview room for one of them. Just before we got there, he said, "Do you think these are worthwhile?"

"Well, at least they cut down on the number of people calling you in your office," I told him.

In that 1998-99 season, Eustachy would hold informal sessions with several of us—maybe Chuck Schoffner of the Associated Press, whatever reporter was covering for the Ames paper, maybe a radio guy and me—in his office.

Those were better than any formal press conference. Eustachy might get going on some topic and start laughing. Then we’d laugh. Afterward, we’d have enough material for a week’s worth of stories.

I guess Eustachy doesn’t do that anymore, and it’s too bad.

In addition to me, the group included Gene Raffensperger, a former sports editor and outstanding newsside reporter; Buck Turnbull, who was an outstanding sportswriter; Walt Shotwell, who had been a talented columnist and reporter; Dave Stockdale and Larry Lehmer from the sports copy desk and occasionally other writers and editors.

Mark Kostek, Paul Morrison and Mike Mahon from Drake sometimes showed up, and anyone else who wanted to listen to a bunch of aging sportswriters and editors holler about what was wrong with the world was always invited.

One day Eustachy showed up with Terry Carroll, who then was one of his assistants. Eustachy gave us the latest coaching gossip and how good he expected his team to be the following season.

We talked about Bobby Knight, Steve Alford, Roy Williams and others—a sort of who’s who in Division I coaching.

Somehow the subject got to Bill Self, who then was coaching at Illinois and recently took the Kansas job.

"Do you know he wears a toupee?" Eustachy asked.

None of us knew. But now every time Self is on TV, I look to see how that toupee fits. I think the other guys do, too.

With the meal and the gossip finished, Eustachy pulled a huge wad of bills out of his wallet and said he was buying for the entire table. A couple of the guys who were still working and thought they had to worry about an ethics code tried to say they’d pay their own way.

They insisted on it for….oh, I’d say a full 2 seconds. Then they did what most sportswriters do—let Eustachy pay the tab for everyone.

In the parking lot, he gave me an Iowa State basketball cap and joked, "Wear this until Alford gives you one."

I still don’t have a cap from Alford. I still wear the one Eustachy gave me.

Eustachy came back a second time to our lunch, and was just as entertaining. He was going on a recruiting trip that day, and stopped by the restaurant on his way to the airport.

But he left his briefcase in the restaurant, and I frantically tried to flag him down as he sped east on Ashworth Road. I knew if he didn’t notice me, I’d have to take the briefcase to him at the airport.

He saw that we were trying to get his attention, turned around and got the briefcase. I hope he also got the player he was trying to recruit.

I was on hand for a number of Eustachy’s games this past season, including both the victory over Iowa in Iowa City and the loss to the Hawkeyes at Ames in the NIT. I know how important that rivalry is to Eustachy—as well as to Alford. That will never change.

But there are some things that should change in Larry Eustachy’s life now. I think he needs to talk with some professionals about his drinking and the problems that go with it. If he doesn’t quit drinking, I think he should ask himself and others if it’s possible to control his drinking.

If it’s not possible to control it, he should quit. Totally.

I also think he should discard that idea of driving to games separately from his team. If the team flies to games, he should also fly. If the team goes by bus, he should be in the bus.

It sounded like a cute, amusing idea for a lot of years, but it’s no longer cute and it sure as hell isn’t amusing.

Some people are openly saying that Eustachy should be fired. It’s time for him to do whatever is necessary to get the rope away from the hangman.

I’m saying that friend-to-friend, man-to-man.

Ferentz has been named Playboy’s 2003 coach of the year, and Gallery and Kaeding are on the magazine’s preseason all-America team.

I guess that’s a good deal, although when Playboy representatives came through Iowa City earlier this month to do a photo shoot for "Women of the Big Ten," the whole deal got the expected, as they say, mixed reviews.

It’s not the first time Playboy has been in Iowa City to take pictures of Iowa women who agree to wear little or nothing for 5 minutes of fame, and it won’t be the last. And it’s not the first time an Iowa coach and his players have been honored by the magazine.

Iowa’s sports information office called it "the prestigious Playboy magazine preseason all-America team" that Gallery and Kaeding were named to. I’ve heard Playboy called a lot of things in the past, but "prestigious" wasn’t one of them.

Anyway, I wonder if Ferentz, Gallery and Kaeding will be pictured in the same issue in which the Iowa females will be included in the "Women of the Big Ten" layout.

I also wonder who will be wearing what.

I assume the women won’t be the ones wearing the shoulder pads, and the 6-7, 317-pound Gallery won’t be wearing a bikini or less.

Ferentz, Gallery and Kaeding will join the rest of the Playboy preseason all-America team in Phoenix for a photo shoot May 9-11.

Ferentz is the third Iowa coach to be named Playboy’s preseason coach of the year. Forest Evashevski won in 1957 and Jerry Burns won in 1965. It didn’t do much for Burns’ career. He was fired after going 1-9 that season.

Former Iowa players on Playboy’s all-America team were Alex Karras in 1957, Curt Merz in 1959, Larry Ferguson in 1961, Karl Noonan in 1964, Gary Snook and John Niland in 1965, Craig Clemons in 1971, Larry Station in 1985, Dave Croston in 1986, Tim Dwight in 1997 and Jared DeVries in 1998.