Iowa promotes Jon Budmayr to wide receivers coach after two years as analyst

IOWA CITY — Iowa football has promoted Jon Budmayr to wide receivers coach, the team announced Wednesday in a news release, filling its last remaining coaching vacancy.

Budmayr has been on the Iowa football staff for the last two seasons as an analyst, most recently with the official title of “senior special assistant to the head coach.”

“Jon is an excellent coach and a perfect fit for this position,” head coach Kirk Ferentz said in the release. “He has a wealth of knowledge and a familiarity with our program that make him a natural to take this role.”

Budmayr previously was the Colorado State offensive coordinator in 2021 and the Wisconsin quarterbacks coach from 2018-20. He also was a graduate assistant at Pittsburgh in 2014, a graduate assistant at Wisconsin in 2015 and a quality control assistant at Wisconsin in 2016-17.

Budmayr aided the development of quarterbacks such as Alex Hornibrook, Joel Stave and Graham Mertz while coaching at his alma mater.

“I have so much respect for Coach Ferentz and the program he’s built over many years,” Budmayr said in the release. “I’m excited to work for him and alongside the great people on our staff. I’m also very appreciative of the opportunity to work with an incredible group of student-athletes and help them develop on and off the field.”

While Budmayr has not been a wide receivers coach at the FBS level, Iowa has experienced success with coaches working with new positions. Iowa tight ends coach Abdul Hodge, for example, previously was an outside linebackers coach at South Dakota.

Iowa’s wide receivers coach vacancy opened following Kelton Copeland’s departure from the staff. Copeland had been on the Iowa staff for seven seasons.

Budmayr will earn a base salary of $375,000, according to his contract obtained by The Gazette via an open records request.

Budmayr is Iowa’s second assistant coach hire of the offseason, following the hire of former Western Michigan head coach Tim Lester as offensive coordinator earlier this month.

The timing of the Lester and Budmayr announcements give both coaches more than a month to acclimate to their new roles before the start of Iowa’s spring practices on March 20.

Budmayr has taken the reins at a position group that is especially inexperienced. Kaleb Brown and Seth Anderson are the only returning scholarship wide receivers in 2024 who have caught a pass in a Hawkeye uniform. (Walk-on Alec Wick had two receptions in 2022 as well.)

“We’re fairly young in that room,” Ferentz said in a news conference last week. “In a lot of ways, we’re fairly inexperienced in terms of production, that type of thing, but I think there’s a lot of potential there.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com