They don’t make you a card-carrying member of the job security club when you become a big-time college football coach. But nobody has to tell that to Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz, whose team is getting ready to shine up the helmets, pull up the socks, and put on the eye-black in preparation for its first ever appearance in the Big Ten Championship game.
Ferentz is likely counting his blessings that he’s still in Iowa City at all as the main man wearing the headset on Saturdays. The dean of Big Ten coaches began his career at Iowa in rather unassuming fashion in 1999, but quickly brought the program up to new heights. In 2002, he had a Heisman finalist in quarterback Brad Banks that got him a share of the Big Ten title and subsequent trip to the Orange Bowl. He led the Hawkeyes to another share of the Big Ten title in 2004, and a win over LSU in the Capital One Bowl with Drew Tate under center. It garnered him coach of the year honors from multiple outlets during both seasons. Things couldn’t have been better.
Then things began to sour.
The league trophy awarded to Iowa in 2004 remains the last conference hardware the program has seen. There was a bit of a cameo appearance in 2009 when the Hawkeyes raced out to a 9-0 record behind the QB play of Ricky Stanzi, but it only served as a flirtatious affair with fans, with the team falling flat in two-straight losses to Northwestern and Ohio State that served as an eject button towards parachuting out of any hopes to claiming another league title.
All told, between 2005 and 2014, Ferentz had some good years, some not so great years, and some very disappointing years. He tallied a record of 73-54 during that ten-year period, missing out on a bowl game twice and barely sniffing anything resembling a championship-caliber squad.
The criticism began to swell, especially after Ferentz was given a 10-year contract extension worth a few ranches full of livestock and cornfields in 2010. We’re still five years away from the expiration of that contract as you and I sit here today.
That brings us to the beginning of this year.
To say that Ferentz was on a hot-seat coming into 2015 would be an understatement. There were whispers and murmurs that the game had passed him by, that he had lost his competitive desire, and that he simply didn’t have the right coaching philosophy in a world where spread-offenses and skyrocketing pinball-type scores have become the norm.
His teams continually looked like a plodding bunch, stuck in the old-timer’s book of fundamental football gone bad, and there seemed to be no desire or attempts to change it. Each year brought in new expectations that served only as a measuring stick of where the program felt it should be, and definitely where it wanted to be.
In other places across the college football landscape, Ferentz would have likely been gone prior to this season, but Iowa is different. Hawkeye fans love them some college football and appreciate a winner — and so does the administration — but patience is a virtue in Iowa City when it’s nothing but a reminder of losing in other locales. Add that to a bloated buyout of a huge contract and the man that had led the football program for fourteen seasons wasn’t going anywhere jobwise, or on the field.
That is, until things got to a point where the buyout meshed with the competitive spirit on the field. It looked like this might be that year.
We’ll never know now will we? What if the 2015 version of the Iowa Hawkeye team tripped on its way out the door again? What if it found a way to lose the game against Pittsburgh early in the season instead of witnessing a last-second, game-winning field goal from what seemed like Dubuque? Would it have found itself, or would shattered confidence resulted in a downward spiral that ushered in louder and more clearer demands for Ferentz to go.
It’s all water under the bridge now.
With this season now almost in the rear-view mirror, Ferentz has not only cooled off the seat he’s perched upon, but he’s likely wrapped up any thought of an early exit from the program. His team has played with passion and intensity, has been uncharacteristically explosive at times on offense, and has simply looked like a team in a day and age when the team concept is lost in all the stats and awards that come streaming at us 24/7.
He is … the coach who gets more out of less once again. His coaching style stands for what’s been tried and tested through the years.
Who knows where this chapter of his coaching career will end. There’s a big one being played in the capital city of Indiana Saturday night, and the stakes literally couldn’t be any higher. A win means not just a Big Ten title that has eluded the program for eleven years, but it’ll mean the Hawkeyes will have elbowed their way into the College Football Playoff … against all odds.
Come to think of it, that’s just how Kirk Ferentz would want it to be; a team after his own heart.
Here’s to you Kirk … give ’em hell.
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Phil Harrison is a contributor to The Student Section. He is also the founder of Big10news.com and featured contributor to collegefootballews.com, talking10.com, and occasionally campusinsiders.com. You can follow him on twitter @PhilHarrisonCFB or email him at pharrison28@gmail.com. If that doesn’t work, you can find him in the doghouse at home.
