FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Before Ali Farokhmanesh found a soft spot in Ben Jacobson’s heart, his coach thought he was Charmin soft.

“This isn’t Kirkwood anymore!” Jacobson screamed.

The gasket blew 17 years ago under a grey sky in Cedar Falls, one of those sleepy Iowa towns where the horizon and the sweet nothing beyond it seem to roll on forever.

Farokhmanesh was 16 months away from becoming a curse word in Kansas, 16 months out from becoming a household name in March that nobody could spell or pronounce. He was just a precocious 20-year-old newcomer on the Northern Iowa basketball team then, a 6-foot transfer from Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids with a sweet shot and a quick trigger.

But because he also weighed about 185 pounds soaking wet, contact was not exactly his forte. This drove Jacobson, North Dakota steel, North Dakota stoic, a little bit nuts. The Missouri Valley Conference was more on par with the Mountain West then, a rough-and-tumble mid-major circuit in which Wichita State and Southern Illinois were more than happy to run over you.

Jacobson’s a family man with a soft voice and a big stick. Like his old boss, Greg McDermott, he’d built his UNI Panthers to be tougher than old jerky. So when he saw Farokhmanesh bail on taking charges at practice, time and again, the family man lost it.

“When he got to our place, he wasn’t super-physical defensively and diving for every loose ball,” Jacobson recalled to me Friday at Moby Arena, a few minutes after he’d watched that precocious kid introduced as the new men’s basketball coach at CSU. “He got out of the way from taking charges. And I laid into him.”

They laugh about it now, the way old friends do. Coach Jake was 37 then. Coach Ali is 36 now, having grown up into a tough cookie who cries a lot.

Yet to the rest of the Mountain West on deck, to the Pac-12 teams waiting in the hole, Jacobson also offered a warning in those quiet, dry, matter-of-fact North Dakota tones. The way a sheriff does during a routine traffic stop.

“He is ultra-competitive,” the UNI coach said. “Don’t let the little jokes fool you.”

'I don’t come here to not win championships'

You ask if this is going to work, and Jacobson smirks. Farokhmanesh had never been a head coach before this week, so as the whispers of Niko Medved leaving to coach his alma mater, the Minnesota Golden Gophers, got a little louder, Ali started making calls.

One of the first was to Jacobson, who’d seen this movie before. The latter was a 35-year-old assistant to McDermott at UNI two decades ago, where he’d helped the Panthers reach three straight NCAA Tournaments. When McDermott left after that third Big Dance in 2006 to take over the head-coaching job at Iowa State, Jacobson ascended to the top job at UNI.

Jake hadn’t been a head coach, either. Nineteen seasons and four Big Dances later, he’s still there — demanding the same standard, the same physicality, the same charges.

“The parallels are very, very similar that way,” Jacobson said of Farokhmanesh, an internal promotion who was on the Rams’ bench for three NCAAs over the last four years. “When you’re in the middle of it, it’s like, ‘Oh man, if we went three straight years, (there’s) that feeling of, ‘Oh, it looks like we should go every year.'”

Here’s the fun part. Coach Ali isn’t thinking his Rams, coming off a 26-10 record and a win over Memphis as a 12 seed, should go to the Big Dance every year.

He’s certain of it. As set as a deadbolt lock.

“Absolutely,” Farokhmanesh told me. “I didn’t come here to not win championships.

“And that’s what I’ve done in my career as a player. I’ve been able to do it now as an assistant coach, and that’s also why I’m going to hire staff that I’m going to surround myself with good people that have won and expect to win. And I want to get players that expect to win. Because there’s a difference between wanting to win and expecting it. You think of yourself in a different way, and you expect more from yourself.”

'He’s going to take it to a new level'

You ask if this is going to work, and Nique Clifford grins. Farokhmanesh has spent almost as much time with Clifford the last 24 months — smoothing over rough edges, rebuilding a raw jump shot from the sole to shoulder — as he has with his own family.

“I think it’s a new era of CSU basketball,” Clifford, a 6-foot-6 wing who projects as a first-round pick in this summer’s NBA draft, stressed after Coach Ali’s news conference.

“Even though he’s been here and helped build that foundation, I think he’s going to be able to take it to a new level. And I’m excited for him. It’s going to be a lot of fun to watch. He’s going to do a phenomenal job.”

Some people are born for this; Farokhmanesh was born into it. His mom, Cindy Fredrick, coached college volleyball for three decades at Weber State, Washington State, Iowa and UNLV, steering her teams to 11 NCAA postseason berths along the way. His father, Mashallah, played on the Iranian national volleyball team before immigrating to the United States and working with Fredrick.

Ali grew up in college gyms and on bus rides, the son of volleyball royalty who amused himself by drawing plays in the sand. He lived vicariously through his folks, soaking up hard lessons and life lessons along the way. Teaching. Preparation. Expectation. Competition. Elation. Disappointment. Contracts. Moving. Empathy.

Especially empathy.

“He’s a great people person,” noted former CSU guard Jalen Lake, a sharp-shooting Texan Coach Ali took under his wing. “He knows how to connect with you. He’s genuine. He’s real. He cares about you off the court. It doesn’t matter what you do on the court — he really cares about you. I just know I can go to him for anything. … I knew he was real, right from the first moment I talked to him. I mean, he didn’t B.S. me or anything. He was truthful and honest with me.”

Coach Ali met wife Mallory in Iowa, where the latter played volleyball for the Hawkeyes. Four children later, it remains the best recruiting job on his resume. Mal’s the real hero of the family, a former ICU nurse and a household’s rock.

Last week, not long after Dad got the biggest job of his life, Mallory told their daughter Mila the news.

“Your dad’s gonna be the head coach of CSU,” Mom said.

Mila, who had a piece of spaghetti in her hand at the time, pondered this for a second.

“I think you’re going to be a good coach, Dad,” she said.

“I got the approval from her,” Farokhmanesh recalled later. “So I feel good about it.”

'He can handle it'

You ask if this is going to work, and Coach Ali beams. The Rams are about to dive headlong into a transitional, transformative phase. The House settlement is expected to become law this spring, meaning universities must share revenues with athletes as soon as the start of the fiscal year on July 1. CSU is slated to leave the Mountain West for the reconfigured Pac-12 in the summer of 2026.

College sports has always had it both ways, one foot planted in education, the other foot rooted in revenue, the system swiftly jumping to whichever side of the line the moment demanded. Not anymore. Court rulings, massive coaching contracts and television dollars have blown a basketball-sized hole through the classic idea of amateurism. As more money funnels upward, the middle class shrinks. Can the Rams find their footing?

“Yeah,” Farokhmanesh told me. “And I also think it’s gotten to the point, too, where people are understanding (the name-image-likeness parameters) more than they ever did before.

“I think three years ago, it was scary — we didn’t know what it was going to be like, but it’s also ever-changing right now. … We just have to be constantly ready to adjust. And that’s the best part about having (athletic director) John Weber here, is that he is one of the most adaptable people I’ve ever been around. He can pivot whenever he needs to. And we’re gonna need that going forward.”

And while we’re on the subject of pivots, young Ali did eventually learn to take charges to his Coach Jake’s liking, to throw his body, whatever there was of it, around with reckless abandon. During one Panthers game, a young Farokhmanesh was so committed to the cause that he once dove between an opponent’s legs to chase down a loose ball, while still having the wherewithal to call for a timeout.

“My dad actually called me (Friday) morning to pass along congratulations to Ali and his family,” Jacobson recalled. “And he said, ‘I still have never seen another guy dive between an opponent’s legs to get a loose ball.'”

“I was coachable,” Farokhmanesh chuckled.

So, Coach: Is this going to fly?

“He can handle it,” Jacobson said. “He’ll be able to do all of the things that a head coach has got to do and take on the increased responsibility and still have the most important things be the most important things, not get sidetracked by the increase in expectations. He can handle it.”

A few minutes later, Jacobson had his arm around Farokhmanesh like the kid never left the nest. The pair huddled close, posing for smartphones while a video board with the words WELCOME TO THE FAROKHMANESH ERA flashed behind them, its gold letters still readable off a slick wooden floor.

They stood tall and smiled. This isn’t Kirkwood anymore.

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