As Seth Wallace stays at Iowa in new assistant head coach role, ‘there’s a lot that pulls you here’

IOWA CITY — Seth Wallace, despite spending much of his childhood not far away in Grinnell, did not grow up as a Hawkeye or Cyclone fan.

“I had friends that were Iowa State fans. I had friends that were Iowa fans. I was neither at the time,” said Wallace, whose father was the head football coach at Grinnell College. “I was a son who was celebrating his father's successes.”

Wallace, nearly two decades after the call from Norm Parker that converted him to a Hawkeye, is perhaps one step closer to continuing the family tradition as a college football head coach after last month’s promotion to the newly-created role of assistant head coach at Iowa.

Wallace’s responsibilities as Kirk Ferentz’s first assistant head coach are not entirely clear yet. The new role is in addition to his existing roles as linebackers coach and assistant defensive coordinator.

“This is the first time we've done this, so I'm not sure what it's going to look like quite frankly,” said Ferentz, who also recognized that “maybe I can do a better job in terms of delegating.”

Ferentz mentioned a practice during bowl prep where he made it back from a funeral “like 10 minutes beforehand” as an example of where Wallace could step in as assistant head coach.

“In a circumstance like that, I'm not in the office for whatever reason, certainly somebody has got to kind of say yes, no or here's what we're doing,” Ferentz said.

The promotion of Wallace to this role is a “recognition of quality work” and the “assistance he’s given Phil (Parker) and the entire staff,” Ferentz said. The new title came with a raise that boosted Wallace’s base salary from $755,000 to $1 million.

Wallace has had opportunities to leave and coach elsewhere — something he acknowledged during Tuesday’s news conference — yet has remained on Iowa’s staff for the last 10 seasons. (That’s in addition to his earlier stint as a graduate assistant at Iowa in the 2000s.)

“I'm probably a lot like the three linebackers that you witnessed this past year that all had the opportunity to leave,” Wallace said. “They all had the opportunity to go on and move on to different places.”

But “there’s a lot that pulls you here” for Wallace, both personally and professionally.

“I'm from Iowa, my wife is from Iowa,” Wallace said. “My parents are around, her parents are around. Anything, any decision made beyond that would probably be pretty selfish on my part, and I might have to do it by myself, and I don't want to do that right now.”

Professionally, Wallace also said the “opportunity to be around some really special people is a big part” of what keeps him grounded.

The creation of the assistant head coach position also could better position Wallace to eventually be a head coach at Iowa or elsewhere.

“I don't know that I've ever thought much beyond where things are right now,” Wallace said. “I was around my father growing up, and I saw him do it, and there were times where I got nervous of the potential that you could wind up in that type of position just because of all that it entails. It's not that I wouldn't want to get there at some point.”

For now, though, Wallace is “very happy to be here,” now with the title of assistant head coach.

“I'm fortunate to be here, very happy to be here,” Wallace said in his first news conference as assistant head coach. “If it wasn't for Coach Ferentz, if it wasn't for Norm Parker's phone call in January (of 2006), I probably wouldn't be standing up here.”

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