Pieces from the Past: Minus frenzy, here's Ferentz

I covered many things and wrote many columns and stories before this blog was born. Since I'm on vacation and out of America for the week (my Dobermans are staying at home with my house-sitter, a burly fellow who has wild mood swings and a nasty temper), I'm going to try keep the blog moving this week with pieces from the past that will be new to almost all of you.

This is my column from the day in December 1998 when Kirk Ferentz became Iowa's football coach. I'll be immodest here, and say I think this piece held up. Of course, would I be sharing any of those that didn't?

IOWA CITY - The Kirk Ferentz era was ushered in Thursday night, and a very nice start it was.

This man was soft-spoken but articulate, and showed a nice sense of humor as he was introduced as Iowa's new head football coach. He said Maine, where he was the coach at the start of this decade, would make a good non-conference opponent for the Hawks.

After all the bombast and venom of the last few days relating to the process of selecting Hayden Fry's replacement, it was refreshing to hear a steady, sane voice.

Whether Ferentz will win at Iowa or not, who knows? Should all of us just settle down, stop worrying about what might have been, and give him the opportunity to take care of business? Yes, that would be nice.

Florida defensive coordinator Bob Stoops was the sexy choice, a fireball from Steve Spurrier's always-hot program. As a former Hawk, Stoops seemed irresistible to so many of us, including yours truly. He would surely give the state an instant injection of renewed passion for Iowa football, we felt.

He surely would have. But maybe Stoops is like the man or woman from your past who dazzled you for a while. Yet, you didn't stay with that person for whatever reason, and instead ended with someone who was less dazzling, but substantial and a much better fit.

"(Ferentz) is a great fit for Iowa," Hawkeyes men's athletics director Bob Bowlsby said. "There isn't any other way to put it."

Maybe the time has come to stop demonizing Bowlsby, his search committee and the U of I administration. Can we admit there is at least a possibility that the AD came up with a good hire who will be do well by the school and its supporters?

Fry stood, applauded and beamed as Ferentz made his way into the jammed Jacobson Building room in which last night's press conference was staged. Fry can't fake that. He wouldn't have been smiling if he hadn't believed the keys to his office weren't going into very good hands.

Ferentz sounded confident without being a bit cocky. He didn't say a thing that resembled a boast, nor did he display any appearance of being intimidated. He was likeable, but didn't pander.

Fry has been Iowa's lightning rod for the last 20 years. Perhaps it is best if his successor is an opposite in that regard.

"I'm not a flamboyant person," Ferentz said. "I think I work hard. I try to give an honest day's work and I try to be a good learner.

"I'm gonna be myself. I'll get a little emotional and enthusiastic. I think I'll be fine.

"I'm going to follow Hayden Fry. I won't even try to replace him."

You have to be mentally strong to be a head football coach at any level, but especially at a place like Iowa where the game is more than a game to so many people. Ferentz doesn't have the national championship experience of being with Florida in 1996, but he was an assistant on some mighty good Hawkeye teams in the 1980s.

It's what he did after he left Iowa that will serve him best, though. First, he went to Maine as a young head coach. It was a program hanging by a thread, and the thread was frayed. Ferentz 's third and final Black Bears squad went 6-5. That was probably as good a coaching job as anyone involved with Florida did in '96.

"Like anything in life," Ferentz said, "with experience and time you can't help but learn a little bit. I've been exposed to a lot of things, I guess. Some good, some bad."

You learn more from the bad, and Ferentz 's six years coaching in the NFL has had plenty of that. He was on a Cleveland staff that led the Browns to the AFC semifinals in the 1994 season. But the other four full seasons had more losses than wins, and his '98 Baltimore Ravens are 5-7.

The owner of that franchise is Art Modell, the grinch who stole football from Cleveland in 1995 and gave it to Baltimore. Ferentz proclaims his loyalty to Modell, which probably makes transplanted Clevelanders in our midst very suspicious.

"I had some wild times in Cleveland," Ferentz said, "when we cut (popular quarterback) Bernie Kosar, and when the team moved. If 1995 taught me one thing, it's that you can take just about anything and you can live through it."

If Ferentz is successful enough, maybe Bowlsby will one day say the same thing about the first week of December.

"It's a super day for us," Bowlsby said. "I couldn't be any more pleased."

Ferentz recalled 17 years ago when he applied for the offensive line coaching job for Fry in a place he had never before visited.

"I went home that night hoping like heck I'd get the job, and sure I wouldn't. It's funny how things work. And here we are."

Here we are. No frenzy for the new coach, no one calling him a messiah. That's not all bad, folks.