For Kirk Ferentz, a Big Ten record for wins built on work, beliefs and people

IOWA CITY -- With some coaches in high-stress, high-stakes college sports, the players are chattel. They come, they go, and their purpose is to do the coach’s bidding.

With some athletes in high-profile, high-pressure college sports, the coach is someone simply someone whose good side they want to stay on to get what they want out of their time in that program.

With Iowa football, that stuff is minimal at most. The list of players who have publicly expressed their respect, admiration and love of head coach Kirk Ferentz is longer than his tenure here, and 27 years as a Big Ten coach is a super-long time. Those players aren’t just blowing hot gas.

You saw it in their faces on the Kinnick Stadium field Saturday night after their 47-7 win over Massachusetts. They intently watched and listened to Ferentz on a stadium video screen as he was getting interviewed by one of the players on his first (and 1-10) Hawkeyes team, BTN’s Anthony Herron. They hung on his words, nodding, smiling, absorbing.

Post-interview, for the first time in any of his 36 years as an Iowa assistant coach or the boss, Ferentz joined his players in the Swarm as they left the field and headed into the tunnel toward their joyous locker room.

The Swarm started here with Hayden Fry, who hired 25-year-old Ferentz as his offensive line coach in 1981 after Ferentz had been a graduate assistant at Pittsburgh. In hindsight, Ferentz says often, it was a crazy hire by Fry. But the Texas fox always could get a read on people.

Fry created the Swarm, with his players linking hands and staying united as they entered the field before games, and as they left it after each one whether they had won or lost.

“The Swarm means a lot to me, too,” Ferentz said an hour after Saturday’s game. “As long as I’m here, we’ll be doing the Swarm.”

The Swarm is togetherness. The Swarm is team.

“I’ve never been in the Swarm, so I made history tonight for myself, personal history. It’s pretty cool. Pretty cool.”

Of course, the reason for the postgame party was a bigger history. It was Ferentz getting Win No. 206 at Iowa, making him the winningest Big Ten coach in the conference’s existence, which has crossed three different centuries.

How Ferentz got the record is both a little miraculous and a little mundane. He plugged away, day after day, game after game, season after season. It was staying true to himself and the professional and personal things he believed, surrounding himself with coaches and players in which he had faith, and getting outworked by no one.

As a result, he’s gotten hundreds and hundreds of college-aged men to exceed what others may have expected of them. What they expected of themselves, for that matter.

Shortcuts aren’t taken, self-pity isn’t allowed. One of the hardest jobs in coaching is getting players to bounce back after a bitterly disappointing loss and get right back at it. Iowa had a tough loss at Iowa State the week before. By the Hawkeyes’ next practice, it was time to get sounder and smarter.

That showed Saturday, as Iowa had a passing game for a change. It showed in the reigning Big Ten Return Specialist of the Year, Kaden Wetjen, who had an uncharacteristically lackluster game at Iowa State. Saturday, he tied a Big Ten record with a 95-yard punt return for a touchdown in his patented dazzling style.

It was the eleventy-twelfth time one of Ferentz’s teams had gotten off the carpet and gone right back to playing with focus and purpose.

“Just the ability to understand that everything we still want is out there for us, and work with that mindset,” said Iowa center Logan Jones. “Coach has instilled that in all his players.”

The players come into the program and immediately start realizing work with spirit and support gets results.

“Most of them like me better after they leave here, usually about five years later,” Ferentz said.

“But in all seriousness, you just treat people right. We’ve been so fortunate because I think we’re pretty transparent about what we are, who we are, and what we’re trying to do. Hopefully, the right people come here that want to be coached and want to be worked with.

“I think we’re fairly demanding, but I think they understand what we’re trying to do, trying to build guys who are going to be good competitors and good football players. But it goes well beyond that, too, and a big part of the fulfillment and enjoyment I've been able to enjoy is just watching guys become adults.

“We’re just all who we are. I guess that’s it. Get the right people to get together, and good things happen.”

The 206 wins and counting, that Big Ten record stays with Ferentz and Iowa for decades, maybe several of them.

“I don’t think it’s ever probably going to happen again,” said Iowa defensive coordinator Phil Parker, who has worked with Ferentz for all 27 years and 206 wins.

“It’s just what his beliefs are and the way he treats people. He’s set the standard of winning with class.”

The Swarm left the field Saturday night with their head coach in the middle of the several dozen players. Chugging right along in spirit were hundreds of Ferentz’s former players, and probably hundreds of thousands of Hawkeye fans.

CommeIts: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com