Raw Chicago: Kirk Ferentz Part 5

This one starts with the painfully awkward autograph request from a Nebraska media member.

INTERVIEWER: (Nebraska media member) Coach, I have this girlfriend who is a major Iowa fan…I was wondering if you could sign this for me to her, I would gain some huge points…

FERENTZ: I am guessing you could use some points too, is that right? All of us could.

INTERVIWER: If you knew her you would be proud.

FERENTZ: So, you're dating an Iowa fan?

INTERVIEWER: Not yet, but it's moving in that direction. Her code name is the Iowa Hawkeye, I call her that.

FERENTZ: Oh, so you can use some help (then there was a two minute exchange of this guy having Kirk sign a license plate…it was comical, yet awkward at the same time, and Kirk didn't flinch and signed it for him to his ‘prospective' Hawkeye girlfriend.)

INTERVIEWER: Thanks coach

FERENTZ: I have an old neighbor in Cleveland. Bo Schembechler was doing a book signing and my friend told him my neighbor was Kirk Ferentz. I had sat next to Bo at Fry's farewell dinner…so Bo signed it ‘Kirk, this jerk is making me sign this book.'

So, there's that.

Here's more on Mike Daniels and how the Big Ten has changed.

INTERVIEWER: You were talking about Mike Daniels….

COACH FERENTZ: We were touching on that a little bit earlier. He was a, I think we got back from the Outback Bowl or something like that. It was in January. So there was a little bit of a time period with the convention going on and there was like a dead period in recruiting. And somebody had sent the tape in probably during the Bowl season or whatever.Darrell Wilson had looked at it and he threw it on my desk. And I'm like what's wrong with this guy? Other than he's not like 6' 3”. He's not tall. So we looked at it. There was a consensus on our staff that we thought he was a good player and we thought he might be a guy that could play on our defense as a defensive lineman. So the next step was to do some work on him and my other memory of it is I remember calling him on a Sunday, late morning, early afternoon, and he was driving back from his visit over at Villanova. And I just asked if he would be interested in coming out for a visit and he said he was. I also remember going out and visiting with his family. And ask him about his granddad. It was really impressive to me. Great story. So that was pretty much it. And they came out and really enjoyed it. And it's worked out very well for us. He's a heck of a young man and a great football player.

INTERVIEWER: [More on Daniels.]

COACH FERENTZ: We're not a big-sized team. If you go back, one of our most prominent players in probably the last decade is Bob Sanders. And Bob still isn't tall, but boy, he can play football. And we don't have the luxury of just looking or taking only guys who are 6'4” , 6'5”. We're just not in that league. We try to look at everything we can and try to find good football players regardless of size and if you look at pro football and look at the New England Patriots. They got two guys, Wes Faulkner and Woodhead that are, neither one of them are going to win a rebounding contest, but boy are they great football players. That's kind of how we have to operate. We have to look at guys, and maybe look at them differently than other schools do.

INTERVIEWER: New coaches in the Big Ten . . .

COACH FERENTZ: Actually, we got three new coaches and … and 14 … with Nebraska and then five with Danny Hope, so we get to play a bunch of new … But, you know, I feel a little bit like I know some of Kevin Wilson's work. I was at Northwestern for a while, as you know. Back when they really got it going. About a decade ago. And then we matched up with Missouri, Bowl games, so we had a chance to see the Oklahoma film. And you know, Oklahoma's been pretty … on offense for quite a while and you know, Kevin's been right in the middle of that thing, so that was one of the tapes that we looked pretty hard at so we got … Indiana and he's had a great career up until now and I know he'll do a great job at Indiana.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think about the new emphasis on offensive coaches in the conference?

COACH FERENTZ: Somebody yesterday said defense, so, you know. But you know… offense …

INTERVIEWER: …

COACH FERENTZ: I don't think so. I think at the end of the day, you know, I think the coaches, the head coach on both sides of the ball, whether it's the defensive coordinator or offensive coordinator, if you look at the NFL, it's really the same way. Good coaches, it's just not either/or. If guys are good coaches, they're good coaches. And certainly …themselves on a great job.

INTERVIEWER: It used to be Bo and Woody. How has the Big Ten changed?

COACH FERENTZ: It's funny you should bring that up. Been there. Been there. This is like the 30-year anniversary I think of … That's just what I think. I don't pretend to be-- If you talk to somebody who's a little bit more informed, but one thing, my simplistic view of this whole thing is this. You know, up until '81, there were two teams that went to the Rose Bowl 13 straight years. It was a two team race. And they had a distinctive way of playing football. And you know, in '81, Iowa was able to breakthrough. And I think Coach Fry was reputed to be a little bit more wide open coach. I think that was a little bit of the shotgun. But certainly the conference teams in the 80's. And Mike White coming in and throwing the ball …yards. And in '82, they set the stadium passing record at Kinnick. I don't know if it still stands, but. I think they scored 10 points and ran about 420 yards or something like that. But anyway, to me, that's when the changes in the conference really started to take place.

And the other interesting thing of note in my mind is that the 11 teams that were in the league last year, nine of them were to go on to a Rose Bowl, in stark contrast to 13 years prior. So I think it's evolved, and what we've seen recently and we'll see in the future is that you have, this is one of the cool things about our conference or adds to the challenge, you know, one week we may be playing, you know, we just talked about, I mean, playing teams that are all three or four wides, and they're throwing the ball 70% of the time, or a short pass type of thing. A lot of that's their running game. Or Nebraska is coming with a team where the quarterback is going to carry the ball an awful lot. And I guess you could say Illinois did a little bit of that last year. I could say, you would say, they did that last year. And then you've got a team like Wisconsin that's gonna line up with, they're going to hand that ball to the running back, with great success.

So, every week is like a whole different preparation, typically, in our conference. And depending on who you're playing, you may play three teams for lack of a better word that are traditional. And then you've got the spread, or whatever the buzz words are right now. So it's, every week it's different. I don't think you can just say, you know, this is what we are. I think we're a very multiple league in terms of the …

INTERVIEWER: … Question on Big Ten having a title game.

COACH FERENTZ: Some of the times. We don't all agree. But adding Nebraska I think is going to be a very good thing for our conference and it helps make us a stronger conference. And I wouldn't, you know, I was on a nine-year sabbatical when Penn State came along and it would be my guess it mirrors that in some ways and it made a major difference in how the transition into divisional play. Because definitely we haven't had any experience with this. It's new territory.