Part II: Barta, Ferentz and the extension

(This is the second story in a four-part series about Iowa athletics under Director Gary Barta. Coming Tuesday: Barta and Gender Equity)

IOWA CITY - Entering his ninth anniversary as Iowa's athletics director, there's one topic that dwarfs all others for Gary Barta - and that's football.

Under head coach Kirk Ferentz, Iowa has competed in 12 bowl games the last 14 seasons. Last year Iowa entered its final two regular-season games with a chance to win the Big Ten West Division title. Losses to border rivals Wisconsin and Nebraska by a combined five points sent morale tumbling. Coupled with a TaxSlayer Bowl disaster, the program has lost momentum with fans.

Barta, however, has remained unwavering in supporting Ferentz.

'I've been very vocal to say that we - being Kirk, myself, the athletic department - had very high expectations going into 2014,” Barta said. 'We didn't meet those expectations. I understand, but they were set really high. So seven wins, there's a lot of programs across the country that would have been excited to say, ‘Eight wins two years ago, seven wins last year, let's go get ‘em in 2015.' But because our expectations were set so high and why were they set so high? Well, Kirk has proven over a long career that he can get to the very highest points. So we were all disappointed. Our fan base was extremely disappointed, and I understand that.”

Ferentz revived Iowa football with a pair of Big Ten titles, two BCS bowl berths and four top-eight finishes from 2002 through 2009. But Iowa has limped to a 34-30 record the last five seasons. When you subtract lower-division opponents, it's 29-30 and against Big Ten opponents, Iowa is 19-21. In trophy games, the Hawkeyes are 5-12 including losses in all four rivalries last year (Iowa State, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska).

In the last five years as a double-digit favorite - games most expect Iowa to win - the Hawkeyes are 12-5 straight-up and 5-12 against the spread.

Ticket sales reflect the dour mood. From 2004 through 2012, Iowa averaged more than 70,000 per home game, including five years of sellouts. In 2010, demand was so high Iowa had to split new season-ticket sales. That quickly has changed. Only one game the last two seasons - last year against Iowa State - was a sellout. Iowa's average attendance dipped below 67,500 for both years.

In late June, Iowa had sold only 32,656 season tickets, 17 percent off last year's totals. It rose to 36,036 by last week.

'We've never taken season-ticket holders for granted,” Barta said. 'But now we expected that we were going to go down some. We anticipated this. So it would have been foolish for us to sit around from January to today and just hope and think maybe things will work out. Starting in January, we started planning for ‘OK, if we're going to be down, what is our strategy, how to approach it?'”

On the statewide I-Club circuit, attendance slumped at most stops. At Marshalltown, it was down between 50 and 75 people on average. In Dubuque, it was about a 40 percent drop. At the Des Moines County I-Club in Burlington, attendance plummeted from 453 in 2014 to 224 this spring.

Longtime booster Dick Benne, who started the Des Moines County I-Club 38 years ago, formerly tailgated with 42 other season-ticket holders from Burlington. Now only six of those people elected to renew their season tickets for this year.

THE EXTENSION

Perhaps the biggest issue for Barta over the years was college football's most talked-about extension. Before the 2010 football season, just 17 months removed from an extension, Barta offered Ferentz another deal. It pushed the coach's previous contract from 2017 through early 2020. The deal paid Ferentz $35 million in base salary and supplemental income. He could earn up to $4.75 million in longevity bonuses and significantly more in other incentives.

A provision that was agreed upon in Ferentz's two previous contracts remained in place for this extension. If, for any reason, Iowa fired Ferentz without cause, he'd earn 75 percent of $35 million. That guaranteed Ferentz $26.25 million.

At the time, it seemed like a bargain. From 2002 through 2009, Iowa was 70-31 overall and 42-22 in Big Ten play. Among Big Ten schools, only Ohio State posted a better record. With his tutelage under Bill Belichick, Ferentz was discussed annually for NFL openings.

In 2009, Iowa finished 11-2, ranked seventh nationally and won the Orange Bowl. With a core group returning and a top-10 preseason ranking, the Hawkeyes appeared poised for an even better season. That prompted Barta to offer Ferentz essentially a lifetime extension.

'Kirk was still being sought after, by both professional teams and by a particular collegiate team at the time,” Barta said. 'I never have and may never again give a coach a 10-year contract, but it wasn't just about winning. It was the way he went about his business. The graduation rates, the approach to his students in life, creating them to be future leaders and, yes, the winning. All of that combined.

'He already had a great contract structure that was put together by (former athletics director) Bob Bowlsby. There came a point where he and I had great discussions and I said, ‘There's going to be other people across the country who can pay you more money. I've put everything on the table but one of the things I'm willing to provide because of your longevity so far, the way you carry yourself, your great fit at Iowa, is a 10-year contract.' I don't regret it at all.”

But the deal has weighed on Iowa, which has been ridiculed for the extension. A Bleacher Report headline in 2012 wrote 'Kirk Ferentz Has the Worst Contract in All of College Football.” In 2013, Sports Illustrated listed Ferentz among the nation's worst five coaches. This year, ESPN ranked Ferentz as the sport's most overpaid coach.

'I just feel the contract was too long when it was made,” Benne said. 'Probably now, it probably would have better to renegotiate it rather than extend it.”

'It seemed to me at that point that all the pieces were in place for football to make another run similar to what it had in the previous decade,” said Iowa City attorney and UI alum Bob Downer, a member of the state Board of Regents from 2003 through 2015. 'So I can't be critical of that. It's a difficult thing to know how to evaluate these things. Sometimes this looks good with the benefit of hindsight and sometimes it doesn't. But I thought the decision at the time it was made, made sense.”

But does it make sense in hindsight?

'I think the jury is still out on that,” Downer said.

If Iowa fired Ferentz after the upcoming season, the school would owe him more than $9 million. Barta said the buyout is not the reason why Ferentz remains Iowa's coach.

'One of the things I always look at when I'm evaluating a program at the end of the year - as I always do - is one, do I believe we can come back and get better?” Barta said. 'Two, do I see the student-athletes and the people who are actually going to make it happen, are they still 100 percent on board, are they still committed, are they still behind their leader? I absolutely see that, unwavering. You add all those things up and it's based upon that, that I throw 100 percent behind Kirk. Not just the longevity of a contract.”

THIS YEAR

With tepid ticket sales and disappointing finishes in recent years, it's fair to say there's more pressure on Ferentz - and Barta - than at any other time in either's tenure. But Barta remains a Ferentz advocate.

Despite an uproar from fans after last season, Ferentz declined to make coaching changes. Unpopular offensive coordinator Greg Davis remained in place. Benne compared the situation to running an underperforming company.

'When something's not running right, the stockholders want to see a change,” said Benne, a season ticket-holder for 49 years. 'The stockholder around here wanted to see a change. Greg Davis, he might be absolutely the best person of the job. I felt a change had to be made.”

Speculation about Ferentz's future has engulfed the postseason discussion. At times it has dwarfed any conversation about the program.

'I just want football to get rolling here so everybody can stop spending time speculating,” said Brent Feller, a Cedar Rapids anesthesiologist and one of Iowa's largest donors. 'At least there will be sports to talk about.”

Barta publicly supports Ferentz's coaching moves. Barta officially serves as supervisor for Ferentz's son, Brian, because of the university's nepotism policy. Barta stood behind football strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle in 2011 when 12 players were hospitalized with rhabdomyolysis as a direct result of a training regimen. Ferentz selected Doyle as Iowa's assistant coach of the year that spring - something Ferentz has done neither before nor since. One hospitalized player, defensive back Willie Lowe, never returned to the field at Iowa and has filed a lawsuit. A trial is scheduled for Jan. 26, 2016.

Ferentz boasts Division I college football's second-longest consecutive tenure (tied with Oklahoma's Bob Stoops). Together, he and Barta form the nation's seventh-longest tenured coach/athletics director tandem. They're only one year shy of second longest.

'It's fair to say that we're tied together because I've been here nine years and there's not many athletic directors and football coaches who have worked together at this level for nine straight years,” Barta said. 'Part of that is I trust him implicitly. He works extremely hard, he loves Iowa, he's committed, he's proven he can do it. If you add all of those things up, part of it just the fact that there aren't that many athletic directors and football coaches who work together that long.

'We have a great relationship. There's times where we obviously disagree and we talk about those things privately. But when we're out in public, we're on the same page.”

Ferentz, who turns 60 on Aug. 1, enters his 17th season as Iowa's coach and spent nine years under Hayden Fry as an assistant. That leads many to wonder if he has the energy to push Iowa to the top again. Barta has no such concern.

'There are those who question whether Kirk is as passionate as he was when he first started,” Barta said. 'I wasn't here when he first started, but he is as passionate and committed and excited as he was when I got here in 2006. Maybe that doesn't always show up, but I could just see his energy was there.”

As for the results, that's wait and see.

l Comments: (319) 339-3169; scott.dochterman@thegazette.com