Brian Ferentz wants focus to be on team that has ‘worked really hard’ ahead of his final game on Iowa football staff

ORLANDO — Brian Ferentz made the same 0.2-mile jaunt from the team hotel to the media hotel for the coordinator news conferences that he made two years earlier ahead of Iowa’s previous trip to the Citrus Bowl.

He again sat down on the stage in a hotel ballroom, made an opening statement about “how excited we are to be down here in Orlando” and took questions from media while wearing Hawkeye apparel.

But Brian Ferentz’s Friday morning media availability was anything but ordinary as he took questions for the first time since the October announcement of his firing and likely the final time as Iowa’s offensive coordinator.

Ferentz went out of his way in the 20-minute session with media to try to redirect attention from his own personal circumstances to a “bunch of players who have worked really hard, overcome a lot of adversity and dealt with a lot of nonsense to win 10 football games.”

“Quite frankly, probably what I resent the most about this situation is that the focus has come off of our football players, who have really accomplished some tremendous things this year,” Ferentz said. “And it's gone on to things that just quite simply don't matter, that are trivial and silly in my opinion.”

Ferentz — after playing at Iowa in the 2000s and coaching at Iowa from 2012-23 — will be on the sidelines one last time in Monday’s Citrus Bowl against Tennessee. Asked about what a win in his final game would personally mean to him, Ferentz said “that narrative is ridiculous.”

“If I share one thing with these players in my time here, I think that this program is not about one person and never has been,” Ferentz said. “And it never will be.”

The spotlight was on Ferentz after the Nov. 18 win over Illinois, his final game at Kinnick Stadium, as players gave the teary-eyed Ferentz a postgame Gatorade bath. Ferentz said the emotion from that day stemmed from seeing “a bunch of players that have worked really hard to accomplish their goals” win a Big Ten West title.

Asked about winning this game for Ferentz, center Logan Jones said the goal is “just to win it for our team” while also recognizing it will be a “very emotional game for us,” given the circumstances.

“You got a coach who will stop by and say hi to your mom, have a conversation with her,” Jones said. “She’ll come to me after the game and say how much that means to her. … It just says a lot about him.”

Interim athletics director Beth Goetz — Ferentz’s direct supervisor in a setup that started during Gary Barta’s tenure to usurp the university’s nepotism policy — announced in October that this would be Brian Ferentz’s “last season with the program.”

Goetz’s decision to fire Brian Ferentz was in the middle of Iowa’s third consecutive season in which it finished 120th or worse in total offense. Injuries to several key players did not help matters, but Ferentz said Friday someone who does not expect adversity is a “fool.”

“We knew there were going to be challenges,” Ferentz said. “You do not know exactly what they are going to be. You do not know how many there will be. Sometimes you do not deal with as many. … You have to find a way to be competitive and try to win football games.”

Ferentz declined to comment on any conversations with Goetz leading up to the October decision, referring questions on the matter to Goetz. She has previously declined to comment on specifics of the conversations as well.

Goetz’s calendar for the week before the announcement, which The Gazette obtained via public records request, showed her regularly-scheduled weekly meeting with Kirk Ferentz on Wednesday of that week, but no other football-specific meetings. An hourlong meeting at the Hansen Football Performance Center for Friday of that week was canceled.

The narratives that followed — the ones Brian Ferentz deemed “trivial and silly” — are not a surprise after the national attention that Iowa’s offensive malaise received after the 2022 season and Barta’s implementation of the 25-points-per-game contract objective.

Ferentz’s situation also is unique as he has continued coaching the program he was fired from in October for the rest of the season. (He stopped wearing Hawkeye gear at games after the firing before changing course at the Big Ten championship game.)

“I made a commitment to this football team and this football program,” Ferentz said. “And like I said in my statement, I intended to honor that commitment and feel like I’ve done that and fully anticipate doing that for the next three, four days, whatever it is.”

As for after the bowl game, he will “cross the other bridge when I get there.”

While Brian Ferentz highlighted his commitment to Iowa on Friday, head coach Kirk Ferentz recognized earlier in the month that his son has to “worry about himself right now.”

“If he gets a job tomorrow, I don’t expect him to be here,” Kirk Ferentz said before the bowl trip. “If he is, I may have to visit with him about that.”

While it is standard for offensive and defensive coordinators to speak to media as part of pre-bowl obligations, Brian Ferentz was not scheduled to speak on Friday. Tight ends coach Abdul Hodge was on the schedule in Ferentz’s place. Reporters found out that Ferentz was going to speak when he walked into the room at the start of the news conference.

While Brian Ferentz mostly deflected any personal questions, he did comment on it being “special that I’ve gotten to coach with my father.”

“I had a chance to get to know my father professionally, which I don’t know that every son does, and that has been pretty special,” Brian Ferentz said. “He has lived up to everything that I imagined him to be. So I have enjoyed every minute of working with him. … I will remember my time fondly. It was a lot of fun.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com