As the Hawkeyes Turn: Unhappy Kirk Ferentz, tight-lipped Beth Goetz

IOWA CITY — There were more questions from reporters than answers from Beth Goetz and Kirk Ferentz on Tuesday. Many more.

Ferentz, the Iowa football coach, did a good job suppressing his anger at his regularly scheduled Tuesday in-season press conference. But this man is not happy.

After Ferentz was done fielding inquiries, he and Goetz shook hands without apparent vitriol in the back of the All-American Room of the Hawkeyes’ football building. He went through a door and to his office and she moved toward the reporters to take questions as they formed a semicircle a few rows deep in a hallway.

She didn’t want to go to the podium in the front of the room. Why walk an extra several steps to say nothing?

“The statement (that she released Monday about the decision to fire the younger Ferentz) speaks for itself,” Goetz said.

Goetz and Kirk Ferentz are two extremely bright people. They know avoiding adding gas to a fire is the soundest strategy after the decision has been made. Ferentz used the terms “move forward” or “moving forward” several times Tuesday.

But while Ferentz didn’t have a Dabo Swinney-like meltdown, this man is not happy. He’s angry his son, Brian Ferentz, will have his career as the Hawkeyes’ offensive coordinator ended after the final game of this season, and mucking up a game-week just made it worse.

But these are big people playing big games on and off the field, and big-time college football is rough and tumble. Besides, keeping Brian Ferentz for another season as the OC was untenable barring some shock-and-awe changes in the offense’s output from now until the bowl game.

It would be a precious pickle for the university to be in if the Hawkeyes turn into the Big Ten West’s version of the Kansas City Chiefs in November. Spoiler alert: Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift aren’t riding into University Heights.

Sometimes you get the feeling no one inside Fort Kinnick knows how hard and how much the Hawkeyes’ offense has been ripped and ridiculed from border to border and coast to coast, and all the ships at sea.

Were it just any old coordinator, the story wouldn’t have caused ripples beyond Iowa. When it’s the son of the head coach and that offense is last in the country in total offense, first downs and pass-completion percentage? When it gained 12 total yards in the entire second half against Minnesota?

OK, but what if … the invalid fair catch of Cooper DeJean against Minnesota was irrelevant to the replay official, DeJean’s punt return for a touchdown stood, and Iowa held on to win to go to 7-1? Does this move by Goetz get made this week? She was asked. She didn’t answer.

A far bigger question is if Kirk Ferentz, whose love for his job has never seemed to wane, will experience waning. You wouldn’t be teetering on a limb to suggest his feelings about the UI no longer are the same as they had been for his quarter-century as coach.

“My plans are like they always are,” he said, “to worry about this game (Saturday against Northwestern in Chicago) and bigger picture, these four games.”

He used the terms “24 years” or “25 years” at least three times Tuesday. Once was to note the times in which he’s waited until the postseason to evaluate his coaches and decide what changes to make, if any. “Yesterday’s announcement was certainly a departure from that practice,” he said.

Once was to say how long he has “tried to operate with the singular focus of doing what I feel is best for the program.”

This may be over-reading things, but perhaps his reminders of the length of his tenure were meant to be taken with an unsaid “This is how long I’ve been in charge of a program that has won a lot of football games at a place where it’s not easy to win a lot of football games.”

It couldn’t have been just one person who made this change happen. We don’t know how UI President Barbara Wilson feels about it, but she signed off on it. Wilson herself fired athletics director Mike Thomas when she was at the University of Illinois in 2015.

She was the interim chancellor at the time.

“There's a chain of command to everything,” Kirk Ferentz said, “and I respect that, and we move forward.“

That chain used to have a president of the state’s Board of Regents (Bruce Rastetter) who was a major donor to Ferentz’s football program. It used to have a university president (Bruce Harreld) who once said Ferentz “gives me a booster shot emotionally.”

It used to have an athletics director (Gary Barta) who may have wanted to remove Brian Ferentz as coordinator, but didn’t and instead got him to sign the 25-point-per-game, 7-wins contract amendment that has been an albatross all year.

That chain of command is gone. Will Kirk Ferentz continue working for the new one? We won’t run out of football chatter around here for a while, will we?

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