Larry Eustachy appeared to have reached the summit of college basketball at Iowa State. After guiding the Cyclones to a school-record 32 victories, a Big 12 regular-season title, and the 2000 Elite Eight, he was named AP Coach of the Year and later received a contract extension that—with incentives—made him Iowa's highest-paid state employee. That reputation unraveled in April 2003, when The Des Moines Register published photographs showing Eustachy holding a beer and kissing several young women at a party near the University of Missouri campus on the night Iowa State had lost to Missouri, January 21, 2003. The newspaper also reported that he had attended a fraternity party at Kansas State after another Cyclones defeat. The images turned what might have been dismissed as private misconduct into a public morality and leadership crisis under the morals clause of his contract.
Athletic director Bruce Van De Velde suspended Eustachy with pay on April 30 and recommended that he be fired. At a press conference, Eustachy apologized and disclosed that he had recently begun rehabilitation for alcoholism. Although he initially suggested he would challenge the suspension, he resigned on May 5, 2003. The scandal also brought renewed scrutiny to Iowa State documents indicating that the NCAA had cited him for rules violations involving payments to players, including Jackson Vroman, for making free throws. Eustachy spent a year out of coaching before returning at Southern Mississippi in 2004; the episode permanently became part of the contrast between his extraordinary on-court success and the personal and compliance failures that destroyed his Iowa State tenure.
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