Iowa replaces national laugh track with an ax, dismisses Brian Ferentz

Iowa, meet Beth Goetz.

The school’s football program certainly has.

Iowa interim athletics director Goetz has ended Brian Ferentz’s tenure as offensive coordinator of seven years, scratching the itch of the OC’s drove of detractors. It also made a clear statement about who now is the true boss of UI athletics.

It isn’t the head football coach.

This result, of course, was never the plan for Kirk Ferentz’s program. Had Kirk known Brian Ferentz would end his Iowa coaching career as a failed offensive coordinator criticized and ridiculed out of a job, he would have hired a non-relative when he replaced Greg Davis in January 2017.

He would have encouraged his eldest son, whose star was ascending at the time, to choose the best of the many employment offers to come from outside Iowa City.

No, the plan was for the Hawkeyes to be humming along and the torch to one day be passed from father to son when the father was ready to pass it, whenever that was. No one who truly mattered at the time argued.

When he was the New England Patriots’ offensive line coach, Brian Ferentz told me you didn’t want to be the guy who replaced his father, you wanted to be the guy who replaced the guy who replaced his father. But he still tried to skip the middleman.

Kirk Ferentz was nearing the end of his second decade as Iowa’s head coach and was just 12 months removed from coaching the Hawkeyes in a Rose Bowl when he promoted his son.

The process for filling Davis’ job wasn’t a process at all. It was Brian. It was always Brian.

“When the reality became apparent, when Greg told me he was going to retire, now it's more than this guy, that guy, this guy,” Kirk Ferentz said on the day his son’s promotion was unveiled.

“You really start thinking about it. You weigh and measure. I didn't reach out and talk to people. I thought at least the guys I'd be interested in, I knew enough about. I know who they are and what they are. What they believe in.

“After pretty careful consideration, deliberate consideration, it made the most sense to me. I think this is the logical (move). He's more than ready. He's had opportunity at other places, and I'm pretty confident he would've had more opportunity at other places, too. Selfishly, whether he's my kid or not, I don't want to lose good coaches off our staff. … I thought about it and this made a lot of sense to me.”

Those who spoke up against Brian Ferentz’s step up were in the distinct minority. He was a sharp, personable young coach who had done fine work helping his beloved father’s Hawkeyes mold more fine offensive linemen and had injected energy into the program as a whole.

Those who complained about nepotism then didn’t have voices that carried. The cries about nepotism over the last few years came because Iowa’s offense underperformed, often woefully. You know those voices did some carrying when you’ve gone 57-25 since the start of the 2017 season and yet something felt badly off.

Yet, let’s remember this: When longtime Iowa offensive coordinator Ken O’Keefe moved on to the Miami Dolphins after the 2011 season, fans were delighted. Successor Greg Davis retired after the 2016 season, and fans were relieved. And delighted.

Brian Ferentz, the new OC? Yes, please, said Hawkeye World in 2017 Younger blood, keen mind, clear voice, someone who studied at the Bill Belichick Football Institute for a few years, coached in a Super Bowl two weeks before joining his father’s staff.

The Brian bandwagon filled up. Almost everyone is fine with a family business for a college sports program as long as the program hums right along. Or more.

But the humming began to get interrupted by squeaking and then squawking. The degree of the opportunities lost because of ineffective offense is arguable, but opportunities indeed were lost.

With better offense, Iowa would have played in last season’s Big Ten championship game. The Hawkeyes shouldn’t have been held to single-digit scoring six times over 2021 and 2022, shouldn’t be last in the nation in total offense right now.

Ticket sales for this season would have dropped were it not for the enthusiasm over Iowa luring entrants of the NCAA transfer portal, particularly Michigan quarterback Cade McNamara. That wore off quickly, and yes, a season-ending knee injury to McNamara had much to do with it. But the coaches recruit and coach the second-teamers, too.

Had Iowa’s defense and special teams fallen off half as much as the offense has, the Hawkeyes would be no better than 2-6 instead of 6-2 with four winnable games remaining.

This was Kirk Ferentz’s offense when O’Keefe was its coordinator, it was Kirk Ferentz’s offense when Greg Davis ran it, and it’s been Kirk Ferentz’s offense with Brian Ferentz as coordinator.

The philosophy and the concepts have stayed on Melrose Avenue. Elite blocking and skill-position play have been absent of late.

It’s a conundrum for many. How do you both celebrate and complain about a head coach who has one of the best Big Ten records over the last five and 25 seasons?

The awkward answer has been to make that coach’s offensive coordinators the scapegoats. As much as playing cornhole and drinking lousy domestic beer, a constant pastime of Iowa fans is verbally mau-mauing those flak-catchers.

Then-Iowa athletic director Gary Barta joined in before taking his retirement package and escaping his own critics. He put the now-legendary 25-point-per-game mandate in Brian Ferentz’s contract, and soon was gone. Meanwhile, the nation kept chuckling at the bizarre amendment.

To paraphrase the ruthless Hollywood producer’s words to Corleone family consigliere Tom Hagen in “The Godfather,”, a school in Iowa’s position can’t afford to be made to look ridiculous. Which it has.

Something had to change, and it will. Brian Ferentz probably will do well somewhere else. I’m a face in a big crowd that once thought he would be Iowa’s next head coach and that it would be a popular choice.

However, that doesn’t mean he would have been a 33-year-old offensive coordinator at a Power Five program had he not also been the oldest son of the head coach.

It will indeed be interesting to hear what Kirk Ferentz says Tuesday at his weekly in-season press conference.

On Aug. 11, I asked him what how he thought college football looked with the Big Ten’s snatching USC and UCLA from the Pac-12. His answer included “Let's just call it what is; it's entertainment.”

I suggested he might not have said such things five or 10 years ago.

“I'm a senior citizen,” Ferentz replied. “I can say what the hell I think now, so what the hell.”

Tuesday, Ferentz holds his weekly in-season press conference. Suddenly, a game at Wrigley Field is a distant second in Iowa football events this week.

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