Prominent quotes from the Kirk Ferentz/Gary Barta Iowa football press conference

All in all, I'd rather have been sailing. And it's cold outside. And I don't sail.

The 45-minute press conference held by Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz and athletics director Gary Barta wasn't happy chat. A quick review of what was said left me noticing these quotes:

Barta: Virtually every student-athlete at some point during the year gets tested (for drug use). We average, I think (Dr. Dell Miller) told me, somewhere between 800 and 900 a year, and we have roughly 700 student-athletes. So you can see the numbers that we go about and test. ... We did learn there were some flaws and inconsistencies. We didn't catch anybody cheating on the test. I'm not at all concerned in following up that there's a staff member that is involved in some sort of inappropriate behavior or cover-up. But we did find pretty strong evidence there are a couple ways our student-athletes have and probably have at some point gotten around the test in some way. That's something that every drug testing situation, it's almost become a cottage industry around the country, how do you beat a test. It's something we have to be constantly on top of.

Ferentz: Learned of some phone calls that were placed to some of our parents, some of the alarming content, just ridiculous questions they were asked.

I'm not a huge fan of the social networks, but so much misinformation out there. I have no idea what's out there other than the feedback I got from maybe some parents. Seemed like it was time to address this.

Q. How do you not know that Derrell is living with a drug dealer? How much policing can you do of that?

Ferentz:  Where does it start and where does it end? That's a question I'd ask you. It hasn't been our policy in 12 years now. Maybe we should change it. We don't do background checks on roommates, girlfriends. It's a pretty wide circle of friends that our players have. I don't know how you would track down, chase each and every one of them. And that was certainly news to me, what I read in the newspaper. I don't know if it's accurate or not. Not doubting the accuracy of newspaper articles. I'm not sure how you'd know that. Maybe that's something we need to do, do background checks on roommates that are not on the team. That we'll consider.

Q. Are they using masking agents, other people to go in and test? Is it accurate in terms of watching individuals?

Barta: All of those are possible ways. Those two don't meet what we've learned. I'm not going to talk about details. What I'm confident about, unfortunately we learned there's enough evidence in our protocol to say that we have to tighten up, that it's pretty likely that someone, and I don't know if it's 1 or if it's 21, but someone has gotten around this process. If it's only one, then it makes you doubt all testing. So we had to make sure, working with Dell, working with the staff, that everything ways tightened down. That's the best I can give you.

Q. Are you able to point to last month on the football field, whether it's Adam, whatever his transgressions are, Jewel, whether it's J.D.'s arrest, fighting, rumors of discontent, are we seeing the root of this come to the surface?

Ferentz: I can't tell you, but my guess is the behaviors of this year's team off the field, I'm just guessing at that, probably not much different. A lot of the same parties we're talking about were on the team last year. When you win 11 games, everything is fine. When you win 7, it's a whole different level of scrutiny. That comes with the territory. I understand that. Just like issues of academic failure, conduct issues, those types of things, it's part of college athletics.

Q. Did drugs cause a fissure in this locker room?

Ferentz: I would have no idea. Not to my knowledge, but I would have no idea.

Q. Do you think the reputation of this program has been damaged?

Ferentz: I can't answer that. I know we've been diligent with what we do on a daily basis. In this case right now, we're talking about one player that had legal issues. Beyond that, that's where it is. Again I'll go back. The other night we had 25 seniors in front of the team that have had a great job. They have done a great job academically, they've done a great job on the football field. You're not going to win 11 games as much as you'd like to. We're not going to win 11 games every year. That's part of the landscape. The media attention in a negative light, that's never a good thing certainly. But there's not a lot of focus on good things typically. There have been a lot of good things that happened this year. We have a lot of good people on the team right now.

Q. Kirk, when you came here, you brought a heightened awareness to drug testing. I know that. Why was that? Where did you get that philosophy?

Ferentz: As I alluded to earlier, if I could have done it when I was coaching at high school, I would have done it. Drugs are part of our culture. We all realize that. That's not unique to football or any one sport. I think there are two approaches you can take. You can put your head in the sand and hope nothing happens. If you waited around for the Big Ten testing, NCAA testing, I think you'd really lose ground there. We have been very proactive.

 This year in particular with all the hype and expectations, for lack of a better word, and really around here one of the downfalls of Iowa, one of the great things about it is the attention. Our fan base is the best. They're extremely enthusiastic. Our media coverage is extensive and thorough. One of my fears has always been that players don't always have to do a lot around here. All you have to do is be on the team and you're a celebrity. Try to keep our guys grounded. I'm not going to put my head in the sand. We want to be proactive, get out ahead of things. If a player does have an issue, I would like to think we know things on the front end so we can shape a change.

Q. You talked about the seniors and the banquet and so on. You have your leadership group. What sort of response do you think you will get?

Ferentz: Positive. We've got 115 players on the team right now, 114 players on the team. I think none of them are happy with losing football games. They weren't a year ago either. We lost two. Our players want to do things right. They want us to win on the field. They want us to win off the field. When players aren't fully invested, they want to make sure we're moving forward in a positive way. My sense is we practiced over the weekend four times, Thursday through Sunday. The team has been very good, very positive in their actions. I see good things ahead.