Doc's No. 1 -- 2010 Orange Bowl

This post coincides with a series on Kirk Ferentz's top 10 games during his Iowa tenure.  Mike Hlas and Marc Morehouse also blog on this topic.

There are plenty of superficial reasons why one could rank January's Orange Bowl win against Georgia Tech as Kirk Ferentz's greatest game as coach. One, it was Iowa's first major bowl victory in 51 years. Two, Iowa finished with its highest final ranking since 1960. Three, it erased the most sour bowl moment of his Iowa career in the same location, a 38-17 whipping by USC in the 2003 Orange Bowl.

But below the surface, taking everything into account, the bowl win showed Ferentz could push the cart back to the top of the college football roller-coaster. After three consecutive top-10 finishes in the early part of the decade, Iowa slipped in 2006 and 2007, winning just six games apiece. In 2008, Iowa began 3-3 before finishing 8-4 overall.

Iowa started 2009 with a 9-0 before losing two straight and taking the regular season finale against Minnesota. Iowa entered the Orange Bowl with confidence but little momentum.

The Orange Bowl game itself was a collection of every Ferentz intangible wrapped nicely into a 10-point victory against the ACC champion. Iowa was the underdog, it relied on "next man in" at running back, it rallied from miscues, executed the game plan perfectly against Georgia Tech's vaunted spread option attack and played doggedly from kickoff to Ferentz's Gatorade bath.

Entering the game, the Yellow Jackets had not punted in 22 consecutive possessions and only 30 times overall. Georgia Tech was forced to punt on its first six first-half possessions, matching a season-high for the Yellow Jackets. During the regular season, Georgia Tech had the fewest three-and-outs in the country with 14. The Yellow Jackets had five in the first half alone.

There wasn't anything fancy to Iowa's defense prowess, just a perfect fundamental approach. The game plan was defensive coordinator Norm Parker's brainchild, but the outcome was pure Ferentz.