Kirk Ferentz Part III

This is the final part.

Here, Kirk Ferentz talks discipline and the dawn of the new season.

ME: Discipline has been and is a topic. The program has had 26 arrests. You can set lines of demarcation anywhere. But the fact of the matter is it's (trouble) never going to stop. There's going to be a certain amount of "breakage" every year. There's alcohol, college and kids. Are you at the point where you feel good about messages being sent and punishments?

KF:  In rough terms, I think we have a very disciplined program. That's a word that could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. To me, the reality of it is we just had a horrific year in 2007. Anytime you get into multiple violations or, more importantly to me, we deviated from college-aged issues. When you're dealing with credit card fraud or things of that nature, that's a path that everyone finds distasteful. I can't to this day give you an explanation for what happened during that stretch. Roughly, the credit card thing was charged in August but it took place in May. And then the close of that period went from May to the following February with the last two guys being arrested.

During that span, seven or eight guys left the team. The only thing I can say there is that we took swift and decisive action. You can judge the harshness of it. I think we treated it appropriately. The thing that concerned me was after four or five guys left the football team, I wondered at that point, what's it going to take to impact some of the guys making bad decisions? We had it continue. That was the time period that was the most alarming and most concerning. Since that time, you can argue the number. I'm just looking back from last August to today, I think last year is an average number with the incidents we had. There's going to be linkage going back to the line of demarcation that everyone is using. Until we move away from those kinds of things, it's going to be natural. I've talked to our team about it. There's going to be linkage until we get away from it and have some distance. I go back to the last calendar year in August to this date, basically we're back to dealing with alcohol-related incidents. Anyone who knows anything about Iowa City knows that's not going to go away. There are more than 2,000 arrests a year for PAULAS, public intoxes, that's a matter of fact. It's also a matter of fact that kids can get in bars here at age 19. Until that law is changed, either the drinking law goes to 19 or access to bars is 21, I don't anticipate those numbers going down, the public intox and PAULA numbers. I don't think that's realistic. As a result, we're going to have our percentage in that group. I'm not conceeding anything. All I know is what I know, but I've talked to guys like Norm (Parker) and I've talked to other people who've been around other places in college football. Norm would tell you we're as proactive as any place we've ever been. We'll continue to be and we'll try to improve that. We're committed to educating our players. It starts there. We're committed to being decisive but also fair with our punishments. The bottomline goes back to these guys are college-aged guys. Anyone who's been a parent can understand not all kids are perfect. Mary and I are raising five of them, five kids, and we've had excitement probably with every one of them so far. That's part of being a parent. It's part of our existence. On one hand, if we can keep it centered on college-town issues, that's a start. Once we get off that path, that's really where I'm alarmed. I don't think I've ever shied away from the fact that 2007 off the field was an awful year. There's no denying that. Nobody's proud of it and we're all committed to making sure we don't have another year like that. And 2001 wasn't a great year, but 2007 exceeded that. Wish I could give you an explanation. We never dropped our guard. We were working at it, but it just didn't show up in the results.

ME: It's not easy to just "kick a guy off" the team.

KF: The bottomline is everyone we recruit, be it a walk-on or scholarship player, our goal is for them to graduate first, have a great experience in football and have a great experience as college students. That's what we're shooting for and we're no different than anyone else. Anytime a player doesn't have a good experience in all three of those areas, it's a failure. Certainly, if you put someone off the team, it's a failure. We failed somehow. Somehow we didn't get it done. There's ownership involved with the player, too, but bottomline, that goes down as a loss. Anytime you lose a player that way, it's not good. Just like if a guy doesn't graduate, that's a loss.

ME: At this point, what do you tell the guys about alcohol? I think the big point is that it's going to hurt performance, across the board.

KF: It's such a huge part of our culture, such a huge part of our college culture, it's a tough battle. It's been that way for 30 years. It'll be that way for 30 more years. The guy sitting in this chair 30 years from now is going to have the same issues. It's not going away no matter what they do with the laws and the ages. I was in a car five or six years ago traveling east and I remember Johnny Bench was on the radio talking about as a young player someone gave him advice on moderation in his personal life --  alcohol, women, hours, those types of things. That's a message I've tried to relay to our players. It's unrealistic to think that nobody on our team is going to drink. We have a lot of guys who are legal age. I'm not sure I have the right to tell them they can't. I can suggest it. But the bottomline is that it gets back to moderation. It pertains to all of us in everything we do. Just understand how things affect you. Typically, most of the incidents we've dealt with, whether major or minor, a very high percentage involved alcohol and a very high percentage involved late hours. It's so predictable. We relay that message. There are a lot of negatives involved with it and if you can't handle it and handle it responsibly, bad things are going to happen. Current events that have come across the last couple weeks, alcohol has been prominent and it's the same old story.

ME: Have the guys at this point been banned from downtown?

KF: I wouldn't say banned, but we're controlling the environment the best we can and trying to explain to guys why we do have the requirements we have right now. I don't want guys to be in a totally controlled environment their entire careers, but we just all have to understand where we are right now.

ME: Do players push back?

KF: That's the unfortunate part. Even in 2007, the majority of our guys were doing a great job basically in all ways of their life, but you know, it takes a couple hits and everyone suffers. It's like when a guy jumps offsides on third-and-1. We all pay a price. There are some parallels there. These guys are young men. It's like when you're trying to impose some rules with your kids at home. They pushback and question. And that's fine. I don't mind giving them answers. But at the end of the day, I guess that's one of the perks I have, I'm allowed to make the final decisions on what we're going to do.

ME: You have a couple players with OWIs and who face suspension. What do you weigh in the length of the suspensions?

KF: It's a team policy, not the department's code of conduct. (OWIs) face a minimum of a game. This is going back a couple years ago. I added a couple things with our team. If you face one of these charges, you're looking at suspension time that's above and beyond. There's a lot of gray area there. I'm the judge and jury, I guess, in a lot of ways. If I'm looking to suspend a player, James for instance, he had a PAULA and I suspended him the rest of the season. He wasn't playing anyway, so it didn't kill any game time, but he missed the experience of being in the lockerroom after the Penn State game, being on the sidelines, which is something that's eating at him, I'm sure. So, I guess relative to where a player is in his career, a suspension for a guy who's being redshirted or who's going to be a backup isn't as severe as it is for an older guy. I weigh those factors. Another thing I take into account is where they're at in the program. What they've done. Have they accumulated a lot of credit? Have the been working on the negative side of the ledger? All those things factor into the discipline we dole out. A lot of times, I'll interact with our leadership group and see what they think is fair. Typically, they're a little more stringent than maybe I would be. That's kind of the typical response. Usually, they're a little harder on guys than I would be.

ME: They are the cream of the crop, for the most part. They got there, partly, because they followed rules.

KF: There are some things where there's no discussion. This is going to be the result. But there's a lot of gray area with these things. It's like your kids at home, you try to be fair. The difference is I've got 115 kids watching. I'll go back to the Benny Sapp thing. The last thing I wanted to do in 2002 was put Benny off our team. That was the last thing I wanted to do. We had no answer to who was going to replace him as a player. But he and I had conversations going into that and he really left me no choice based on the conversation prior to his incident, which didn't merit dismissal but it was an accumulation. The one thing I won't do is factor how it impacts our team from a playing standpoint. You can't do that. You just can't do that.

ME: A guy like Stephane N'Goumou from Maryland. His a kid, he's 17 or 18. He's playing video games at home. He comes here, do these guys know the pedestal. There's a certain amount of pedestaling that goes on here. It's a different world. Take away alcohol and downtown, if a kid is at the mall wearing his hat sideways, it reflects. Do these guys know the spotlight?

KF: We spend a lot of time on that. It's a realization we had a couple years ago. Typically, our orientation was in August, that's the way it used to be. Now with players coming in earlier, it became clear to us that we needed to do our best to indoctrinate them. We're a little unique. We're in a group of less than 10 percent or 5 percent of the Division I programs that doesn't require its incoming freshman to come in for summer school. It's kind of like me and the BlackBerry, we're way out of the norm there. I just can't imagine that's critical to a team's success. I can't imagine it. I'm not ready to buy that one yet. As a result, we have guys coming in at different times. We do try to orientate them right off the bat. We get our older players to help out. It really doesn't matter where they come from. They can come from small towns or cities, but the thing that is unique no matter from where they're coming from is the level of attention that they're going to see.

It's one of the things that makes this a great place to play. It was no different for me running out of the tunnel for the first time in 1981. Gosh, unbelievable. Kinnick is unique that way. We have the greatest fans. But there is a double-edged sword, obviously. Responsibility comes with that. We all love it when we come out of the tunnel and the fans are going crazy, but the flipside is that our fans are going to be interested when things are going wrong, too. If someone is dressed inappropriately, acting inappropriately, we have to be aware of that.

It's part of the educational process and it's ongoing. We've even started it now in June. We probably had eight or 10 guys in June. We start then. Chic  (Chigozie Ejiasi, director of player development) has a hand in that. Chris (Doyle, strength and conditioning coach) talks to them about it all the time. We have older players talk about it as well. It's ongoing. It's tough for a kid to be prepared. Just going to college is enough of a challenge. But the level of scrutiny here. I've always joked about this, our guys don't need to be good to be big deals around here. All they have to do is wear an Iowa football T-shirt, that's, oh gosh, they're on the team. They might not be doing well, but they're on the team. That's not normal or natural either. Usually, you get the attention with performance.

ME: This is the dawn of a new season. What revs your motor about this? What do you look forward to most?

KF: It's funny. Pro football taught me how to get away, how to remove myself a little bit, find some time to think about other things or thing about things from a different angle instead of pounding away at things. That's kind of what this time of year is for, to think about things that you might not take the time to think about. Too much of that time is dangerous, too. It always fun when you get going. I've always enjoyed preseason camp as much as anything. It's strictly you and the team. People on the outside know not to call you. They know not to ask you to go speak here or there. They know you're full-scale. The fun part is to see where the team is at. That's a great thing about college football. I've said this before, but players change so dramatically. That happens at different stages for everybody. So, all of us are curious to get on the field and see what that first week brings. The other thing about preseason is that it's a long enough period where the picture becomes clear as you go along. We have a lot of positions right now that are undecided and all of that. Twenty five days of preperation have a way of bringing certain players to the surface. Other players will dip a little bit. Then, you have the other variables, injuries and all of that. It's always an interesting puzzle. It's really the one time where it's pure coaching. We're not worried about any one opponent, especially for the first two-thirds of camp, so it's just pure teaching, pure coaching. You spend all your time with players and the staff. If you like football, it's a great time. It's a lot of fun. There's always that eagerness to see how things are going.