Football timetable throws UI policies a curve

IOWA CITY -- The Iowa football coaching staff turnover took some human resources moves to install the new coaches in time for spring practice, Iowa athletics director Gary Barta said Monday.

Offensive coordinator Greg Davis was hired under an "emergency plan," Barta said. The emergency being this is major-college football and the calendar demands that the person running your offense be in place for spring practice, when at least some of the changes can be implemented.

The twist with the emergency hire plan is that head coach Kirk Ferentz will have to officially reopen the position at some point in the next year.

"Greg is our offensive coordinator," Barta said. "There is a point where Kirk will have to go through and do a formal process. He'll do that probably sometime within the first year."

Barta was then asked if there would be a second year for Davis.

"Certainly, but there's a formal process with the university and we'll follow that," he said. "What prompted this was the fact that we didn't have much time to prepare for spring ball, so it was a unique circumstance. The university has an emergency hire process and we went into that mode."

Offensive line coach Brian Ferentz faced scrutiny for nepotism policies. All 50 states either prohibit or suggest guidelines for conflict-of-interest situations.

"With Brian, he shares the same last name as someone else on the staff [head coach Kirk Ferentz is his father], so there's a process that the university has," Barta said. "It's not unique to athletics, it's unique to the campus and the state university system, so we followed all those processes."

Defensive coordinator Phil Parker was an internal promotion. And yes, that comes with a process, too.

Barta was asked if this is particular to Iowa or if this was something Iowa's Big Ten peers also go through with hiring coaches.

"Certainly, every state institution has a process and this case, just like every other, we followed the processes," he said. "At the end of the day, it's not the process that's important -- it's important to stay within the protocol -- what's important is you go out and hire the best coaches available and that's what Kirk did."

According to a university official, the salaries for all of Iowa's new assistant coaches haven't been set, nor have their contracts been approved.