Ferentz's Iowa knows what it needs and wants to be

IOWA CITY — Our college football recruiting profile is easy. Go get the Under Armour model dude. You know, the guy with the 29-inch waist and the 40-inch biceps who most assuredly can run a 4.3-second 40, squat the equipment truck and is one of those X-Men who heals himself in the time it takes to microwave chicken tenders.

That's our college football recruiting profile. Don't say it's not realistic. Alabama has an army of those, right?

This is not Alabama. The X-Men are fiction. The Under Armour model lacks functional strength and football speed.

You can argue that college football is the most stratified major American sport. Alabama and Ohio State are the front-runners in the College Football Playoff. No, this isn't 2014. This is college football at this point in time in 2016.

Every college football program has its recruiting reality. You need to know who you are to have a realistic handle on your reality.

Iowa football has that under Kirk Ferentz, who's ending his 18th season as head coach and 27th overall in Iowa City. As an offensive line coach, recruiter and now as the head coach, Ferentz has an acute understanding of what kind of players will thrive in Iowa City.

The Iowa staff often views talent through the template of who's thrived at Iowa in the past. So yes, cue the Dallas Clark references. And Abdul Hodge. And Chad Greenway, Robert Gallery and Marshal Yanda and so on.

'I'll go back to when (Ike) Boettger and Boone (Myers) were being groomed to be the tackles two years ago,' Ferentz said. 'As bad as it was in the preseason, we'd seen so many things that they'd been doing over two or three years that we all were really confident. These guys fit the mold of what we've had success with.

'A big part of everything we do, there's a lot of comparison game here. I guess it goes back to the continuity theme. I'm not big on comparing our guys to their guys, but I like to compare them to guys we've had come through the program. We've had so many guys who didn't fit the mold, but ended up being good players here. (Matt) Kroul, (Mitch) King, being great defensive tackles even though they were undersized. When we see traits in a player now that maybe Kroul had or whomever, Dereck Robinson had, those are things that make you feel good. When you don't see those traits, that causes concern.'

In the wake of the Hawkeyes' offensive line winning the Joe Moore Award, Ferentz, Iowa strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle (who absolutely is Ferentz's No. 2 in command), offensive line coach Brian Ferentz and defensive line coach Reese Morgan talked about the profile they look for in recruiting and in the weight room for success at Iowa.

Let's jump to the conclusion that it's not for everyone. Of course, this is entertainment and not protecting our country, but you can draw parallels between signing up with the Hawkeyes and signing up for the military.

You're going to get worked.

'There are some commonalities, I think, when you're trying to do something that's hard to do and it's competitive,' Ferentz said. 'You experience a lot more disappointment and a lot more lack of success — I don't like the word failure, necessarily — but you come up short sometimes more than you reach your goal. So, you know, it's just part of the deal.'

Hlas: Chris Doyle's favorite muscle is the brain

Another conclusion is mistakes are made. Iowa has broken keys off in at least six wide receiver scholarships since 2012, which would've been a group that might've helped a passing offense that finished 114th in the nation this season.

'I think everyone has talent and talent is overrated,' said Doyle, who's been Ferentz's only head strength coach at Iowa. 'I think when you bring kids in, there are certain kids who are 4-star, 5-star, they come from a certain school, they have a certain pedigree. Their resume looks better. The intangibles, the stuff that's hard to measure when you're assigning stars to an athlete, is their grit, is their determination, the family makeup.

'What's going to happen when this kid faces some adversity? They say enthusiasm is common, but endurance is rare. There have been so many guys in our program who have had uncommon endurance and uncommon grit and over time they were rewarded for it.'

Again and again, the intangibles were mentioned. Of course, there is a reality. A 5-9, 170-pound offensive guard at Iowa City West High School isn't going to play O-line at Iowa. But given the athletic characteristics of a Big Ten offensive lineman, from there the intangibles often dictate for Iowa whether a prospect is even going to receive an offer.

'Once you find the physical characteristics, which ... I wouldn't say they're bountiful out there,' Brian Ferentz said. 'There are a lot of guys who have the physical ability to play at our level. The intangibles, you're looking for guys who love football, who want to compete, who have unselfish attitudes. I wish it was as easy as saying, 'Here's a survey, 'Here's a test,' like they do in the NFL. Everyone takes a personality test. ... Recruiting doesn't really work that way."

Then Ferentz talked about the exposure Iowa coaches do get to players, specifically in the camp setting, when they can stack a deck against a prospect, sometimes without the prospect knowing, and see how he responds to coaching and adversity.

'You get to know their family,' Brian Ferentz said. 'You get to know the people who coached them. You get to know the environment they've grown up in. You get to try to get a feel for them. There's no socioeconomic indicators, there's no geographic indicators. There's nothing simple about it to me. If you know the people who've had success here, then you have a pretty good idea of what you're looking for. It's hard to quantify, but you kind of know it when you see it.'

They saw it in the summer of 2012 when Ike Boettger was a junior quarterback from Cedar Falls High School. He camped as a QB at Iowa. The Iowa staff asked him to put on some pads and come back the next day as a TE. He ate some turf burgers. Still, he ended up with a scholarship and is now in his second year as a starter on Iowa's offensive line. (This also was some 65 or so pounds ago.)

Doyle had a front-row seat for Boettger's development. The fact that Boettger came out of the Cedar Falls program carried weight with the Iowa staff. It's long been one of the most successful high school programs in eastern Iowa.

'What kind of background is this kid coming from? What's he used to?' Doyle said. 'He's coming from Cedar Falls. Great family. Athletic. Hard working. Humble, smart kid. Will we bet on him? Absolutely. We'll put our chips right there and see what happens.'

Brian Ferentz said Iowa is highly selective when recruiting offensive linemen. They don't like to go far outside of the region for O-linemen, because they 'don't know them as well.'

'We'll give you the tools, that's never going to change,' Brian Ferentz said. 'But how willing are the kids who come in here to accept that coaching? How responsive are they to that environment? That's what's going to determine their success.'

Morgan recruits Iowa and the plains. This also ties into Iowa's walk-on program, so at any given point, Morgan might have his fingerprints on nearly 20 percent of Iowa's roster.

No, Morgan isn't really high on star ratings and the reach of the recruiting industry (is it an industry? yes). He logs miles in his car. He talks to coaches in gravel parking lots at truck stops (the Drew Ott story).

'Coach (Kirk) Ferentz has done a really good job reminding our staff that some of our best players have come from us getting to know people, studying tape, learning more about them,' Morgan said. 'You look at some of the guys we've taken in January — Micah Hyde, Mike Daniels, Desmond King. Three guys who aren't from Iowa who we found late in the recruiting process who became really great players for us.

'Is there a direct correlation between recruiting rankings and success, other than if you look at Alabama, which we are looking at when we look at Florida (for the Outback Bowl prep). They've got guys on the field who could play for anybody. They're good and they're extremely well coached. But recruiting rankings? No, not personally.'

Morgan began as recruiting coordinator for Ferentz at Iowa in 2000. In Morgan's view, what is Ferentz looking for in a recruit?

'Love for game, passion,' Morgan said. 'Is he tough? Does it show up on tape? Is this guy a tough, physical guy? Is he all about the team? Is he a high-maintenance guy who talks about me or I? You want someone who has high character, who's going to make good choices, who can succeed here academically and someone who has a very, very strong work ethic and a desire to improve. You can't put yourself above the well being of the football team.'

Brian Ferentz on what key trait? 'Competitive nature,' he said. 'Physical toughness and competitive nature. It's a brutal sport. You have to be willing to inflict brutality, but you're going to absorb a lot of it, too. Your physical competitiveness, your physical toughness, your competitive nature, that's going to roll into how well you can play on the offensive line, more so than your athletic ability.

'How many times are you willing to get hit and keep getting up?'

This sort of leads to the recruiting kitchen fire that ran through this fall. The Hawkeyes had commitments from four Texas skill athletes. For various reasons, ranging from a 'no visit' policy for oral commits to style of offense, four high-profile Texas commits parted ways with Iowa (or vice versa in some cases).

The Iowa program put itself out there and for various reasons it didn't connect, at least not with these four players from Texas.

If you're waiting for this staff and program to adjust to that, don't cross the street while staring at that watch.

Every year is different. Every team develops differently.

'You have to make sure to honor the values that built this program,' Doyle said. 'Culture is your values plus your behavior and then minus what you tolerate.

'I used to think it was just values plus behavior, but if you tolerate enough junk going on in your hallways or in your locker room or on the practice field or in the weight room or on the field, then you're going to pay for it eventually.

'For us we have to be true to our culture. ... Remembering how you got there, remembering how you win at Iowa. If we're true to our culture, we usually play hard and compete well. Do we win them all? No, but we usually represent this campus, represent the state of Iowa and represent the people who are associated with our program well. If we're true to our culture, if our values and our behavior are in alignment, we usually are respectable as a program.'

It's a tough sell. It's not for everybody. And yet, the charge here is winning football games, educating young people and winning football games.

In speaking about keeping Iowa's culture aligned, Kirk Ferentz ran it through the temptation of the NFL, something Hawkeyes King and Brandon Scherff pushed aside within the last few years in order to return for their senior seasons at Iowa.

'College football is a pretty good deal,' Ferentz said. 'As good as the NFL is, it will be there when you get that time. Brandon's going to have a nice career. Desmond is going to have a nice career too.

'Everything has its time and place. Patience is a good thing, but that's a sell to everybody, right?'

Read More: King says he never considered skipping Outback Bowl

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com