KIRK SPEAKS: Big Ten Media Day
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Folks, somehow the calendar is about to switch to August, and somehow, Big Ten Media Day is here. Football is close, y’all. I don’t know about you, but I could definitely use a crisp football Saturday right now to get a break from this awful heat and wildfire smoke.
On that note, I have a confession to make: I’m feeling somewhat optimistic about Iowa football this season. Should I write the optimist guide this year? More on that in the next couple weeks. Long story short, the changes that Tim Lester has been able to make to the offense, plus our additions from the portal, particularly at wideout, have my long frozen heart slowing starting to thaw.
But, we’re not here today for my opinion on the outlook of the season, we want to hear it from Kirk Ferentz, who participated in his 27th (!) football media day, a legitimately stunning number. While my consistent pessimism may be thawing, my snark will never go away, so check out the full transcript HERE and my highlights and classic snarky commentary below.
Let’s start with the opening statement:
KIRK FERENTZ: We started back January 20th, our first day of class at Iowa. That was the first time we came together. Obviously had a few add-ons in June, 11 high school players joined us then.
Our year, typically our traditionally, I’ve had a pretty high retention rate. This year is really no different. But the big difference was we had a big senior class and a couple guys that left, so we brought in roughly 30 newcomers at midterm back in January, half being transfers, half of them being first-year high school players coming in starting college.
All but one of the transfers was an underclassman. So one senior in the group, then everybody younger. I bring that up in it’s been a good learning process for us the last seven-plus months of the team really learning about the program, what we’re trying to get accomplished.
Just happy to say the effort has been good. It’s been a group that’s really been attentive and they’ve been responsive. With every phase that we go through, I think we’ve seen growth in terms of the cohesiveness and our leadership base. Those are all key things if you’re going to have a good certain. Certainly so far so good.
While there is definite excitement about the team this year, there are also definitely a lot of question marks on both sides of the ball — offensively at quarterback, and defensively on the defensive line (yes I used an em-dash, but fear not, this and all of my posts are 100% written by a human and will never be touched by any facet of AI, ever. I just like em dashes). While this year’s schedule is overall pretty forgiving, I still think we could see some bumps in the road early on, like we saw last year with Mark Gronowski and the offense. Speaking of quarterback…
KIRK FERENTZ: Personnel-wise, teamwork-wise, first question obviously is going to be the quarterback position. Bottom line is this: right now we don’t know the answer. I can only tell you we’ll know the answer when we know it. Hopefully sometime in August that will become apparent. It may be in-season. Can’t rule out any possibilities.
The bottom line is we don’t really know who our starter is at this point, but are really pleased with the guys that are competing and the growth they’ve shown in the program now a year-plus. That part’s good.
“We’ll know the answer when we know it.” Wow, Kirk is already in midseason form here. I guess that’s to be expected at your 27th media day appearance. For my money, I’d like to see Jeremy Hecklinski be the guy. I was not impressed at all with Hank Brown last year, even though he was brought into very difficult situations. I’ve heard both have looked good overall, and I actually trust Lester to make a decision like this, so hopefully we’ll get the right guy behind center from the start so we don’t have to spend all season calling for the backup if the chosen starter disappoints.
KIRK FERENTZ: Our biggest area of focus and concern will be the defensive line. Seven of our top eight guys from a year ago are gone. Anxious to see how that goes. A lot of growth in the spring, expect to see more in August.
The one thing I will say there, I can just foresee us probably rotating players on a more frequent basis than maybe we have the last couple years. Don’t envision anybody playing 500 snaps this season. We’ll let all that shake out.
Interesting tidbit here about rotating players on the defensive line. This makes sense, and will probably be dependent on the matchups the line is facing – and will also just be a smart way to develop a a young line. I trust in Phil Parker to keep the group competitive, even if they may not be elite.
Q. The commissioner was up there earlier talking about in favor of the Playoffs expanding to 24 teams. With you being the longest-tenured coach in the FBS, can you talk about how potential expansion can benefit a place like Iowa?
KIRK FERENTZ: I’ll go back from when they went from two to four. My feeling then was if you go to four, you may as well go bigger number at that stage. To me just having two teams play for it, there were some subjectivity there obviously. Revenue opportunity, all that stuff that comes with Playoffs.
When we went to four, it really kind of minimized or started to cheapen some of the bowl experiences, more players opting out, that type of thing. Silly me, I thought playing in Orange Bowl, the Rose Bowl, whatever, was a big deal. That attitude started to grow with that.
My attitude is, if we’re going to go to two to four, I’d go bigger. 16 or 24, I’m in favor of 24 certainly. The other part of our story is our focus needs to be on some other issues that are bigger to college football right now than the Playoff discussion.
Totally in favor of 24, to answer the question. I think it benefits everybody, not just a school like ours.
KIRK FERENTZ SUPPORTS A 24 TEAM PLAYOFF. I don’t know why I find this somewhat surprising, but I do. As someone who may never get over the fact that Indiana Football not only made the CFP but won it all before Iowa could even have a home playoff game [EDITOR’S NOTE: and did so after Iowa effectively BEAT them in the season if not for a f*@%)ing QB injury late in the game – GAH], I support anything that could get Iowa into the playoff, but it definitely does cheapen the accomplishment a bit if we’re taking that many teams.
Q. I wanted to ask about bringing in Tom Moore over the off-season as a senior consultant to yourself and offensive adviser. What does it bring to help you and this team continue to evolve?
KIRK FERENTZ: Just wisdom and experience. You can’t put a price tag on that sometimes.
Tom is an amazing person. Played at Iowa. Never started a game as a quarterback. That was his position. But found a way to help the team as a kicker and a punter. But he’s got such an appreciation for his experience, and that’s a few years ago, late ’50s, 1960. He has an appreciation for the game of football and the people involved.
He stands for me all that’s good in football.
As far as a coach goes, one of the beauties of Tom is his wisdom is extensive, but his clarity and ability to cut to concise points that really matter. He has an innate ability to do that. To have him with us, it’s a benefit for everybody in our building. Everybody in our coaching staff, I’ll start with me, but everybody has benefited from it. Our players as well. They gravitate towards him, want to ask him questions. To have his experience available to everybody, I feel very fortunate to have that.
Plus I wanted to get somebody in the building older than me (smiling).
I absolutely loved when this news came through my inbox a few months ago. It’s another reason why I feel like the offense is actually trending in the right direction. I need more convincing from the on-field product, but the offensive coaching staff is in a good spot right now. If we can get an actual wide receivers coach, we might be onto something.
let’s end with this:
Q. You stated previously how you’ve seen the changes throughout college football, the change in the Playoffs, transfer portal, introduction of NIL. What are your thoughts on the current state of college football?
KIRK FERENTZ: I’m concerned. I’m concerned. To me that’s our single biggest issue right now. I kind of prefer to work with boundaries with a system, a system in place. Spent six years in the NFL. I really don’t have any aspirations of ever going back there, haven’t since I left.
I’ve enjoyed every job I’ve ever had. But two things are really appreciate about the NFL: contracts are contracts, they mean something, and there’s a salary cap. In the NFL, another thing is equal enforcement. All rules get enforced the same ways, 32 teams. You have 32 teams operating in the same system, same set of circumstances and rules. It really gets down to the players and the coaches. Imagine that.
The more we can move in that direction, I’m old enough to remember the ’70s, I’ll give you a quick — pick an easy one. When I got to Iowa in ’81, we went to the Rose Bowl first time in 19 years, had a winning season. First time in 13 years that someone other than two teams have been to the Rose Bowl. I would suggest the Big Ten has been healthier since 1981 than it was during the ’70s. That’s just me as a participant, that’s how I look at it.
I think if we’re not careful, we could go down that road again as a bigger enterprise, college football.
I remain extremely interested in Kirk’s opinion on the state of college athletics, and I’m glad he continues to voice his discontent. He’s right that we remind in the wild, Wild West right now when it comes to…anything. While I do think eventually it will right itself, we’re living in a landscape right now where anything goes and a lot of shit tries to hit the fan as a result. If we want college athletics to continue, we’re gonna have to fix things quickly in the next few years, and it will take coaches like Kirk calling for fixing it for it to actually break through. Make this the NFL Development League, I don’t care, but there has to be a breaking point, especially when it comes to the money being thrown at these kids for them to just go chase a higher dollar amount a year later.
That’s all from me today, but I’ll be back before you know it – camp and local media day is right around the corner. GO HAWKS!
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