Hlas: Kudos to Hawkeye coaches for some candor and info

I can't remember saying this before, but I'm sorry I couldn't attend a college football weekly press conference.

That was the one held by the University of Iowa's football program Wednesday. It featured head coach Kirk Ferentz as well as offensive coordinator Greg Davis and defensive coordinator Phil Parker, and it had meat on the bone.

We in my business are quick to complain when coaches and athletes aren't candid. We should note it when they do give us candor and information, and I appreciate that the Iowa coaches did just that Wednesday.

I didn't attend partly because I had a podcast to record and post with Jeff Pearlman, the author of a new book on Brett Favre. I beseech you to click here and give it a listen when you have a half-hour to spend. Pearlman is as good as they come when it comes to writing sports biographies.

All right, enough self-promotion. (But listen to the podcast. Pearlman is an interesting person.)

Ferentz said something Wednesday that at least indirectly referenced something I wrote after the Hawkeyes' 17-9 loss to Wisconsin last Saturday. It was about the coach choosing to kick a field goal on 4th-and-5 at the Wisconsin 20 with 5 ½ minutes left in the game and the Badgers leading, 14-6.

I wrote: That was Iowa's 11th possession, and it hadn't gotten past the Wisconsin 19-yard line all day. So you're kicking a field goal with 5:25 left to make it 14-9 and you'll still need a touchdown to win?

'You have to score twice,' Ferentz said. 'It gets down to that. Somehow, some way, you're going to have to score twice.

'If there's a little bit less, fourth-and-2, something like that, we probably would have gone for the touchdown.'

Maybe Iowa should take a sliver of money from the $90 million north end zone renovation project and hire a math major who specializes in quickly computing probabilities.

OK, that was a little too heavy on the snark. But it — I think — got a response from the coach on Wednesday when he said he had been reading local newspapers (bless his heart) and noted 'There are three things that had to take place for us to tie the ballgame (get the five yards for a first down, continue for a touchdown, and convert the 2-point conversion). Two ways to play it, we played it the other way. You could have played it the other. And there's really no way to know. If you were successful either way then it's the right answer. If you're not successful then it's the wrong answer. We'll wait and see.

'We work with an analytics company and we meet on Thursdays, spend a significant amount of time every Thursday on those situations. Not only ours, but nationally, and be curious to see what their feedback is.'

And there was a story, that the coach freely revealed. He said he and his staff spends 30-45 minutes a week reviewing several cases — many presumably down/distance/time remaining/score — from the previous weekend's games.

Which, were I an Iowa fan, would encourage me. The more you open your mind and consider possibilities, the better.

I still think going for the field goal wasn't the highest-percentage play for the Hawkeyes to win that game, but as I also wrote Saturday, the odds were against them no matter what they chose to do and that decision wasn't what beat Iowa. Wisconsin beat Iowa.

Learning a few days later that Iowa is using analytics was an interesting piece of residue from the game. Maybe the program doesn't need to hire a math major after all.

Parker's response to being asked about analytics was interesting.

'Usually the analytics I think is good,' he said, 'but usually I have a feel for it. And when you're calling a game and when you're sitting there and going through it and you're in the third quarter, fourth quarter, whatever, you better know what's going on, what they're going to do. I get it more from my feel than the analytical stuff.'

There is that. At some point you have to coach with your gut. You see it with Chicago Cubs Manager Joe Maddon. He knows the percentages as much as anyone else in baseball, but sometimes he does things because he thinks they're the right move at the right time no matter what numbers might say.

Then there's what Davis said: '(Analytics) gives you good indicators. I'm not sure if makes any blocks for you or anything like that.'

In another matter,

there are those who think tackling is being legislated out of football. Parker, a terrific defensive back at Michigan State in the 1980s, had a lot to say about that Wednesday.

'You know, it's really hard, because the game of football has really changed,' Parker said. 'And it's going to come pretty soon to flag football, I think, at times. And it's a shame. It's kind of going away. And hopefully I won't be around by that time. Some guys are really trying to protect guys. But some good hits are good hits. And the game is a violent game. We all know it before we get here. As soon as we walk on and get into the field, everybody knows that we're playing tackle football.

'And as soon as you tell me there's a defenseless player on the field, how come he doesn't know that we're playing the game of football? We're allowing receivers downfield to catch balls, uncontested, getting hit. If you blow on them, touch them, you're going to get a flag. Anything that you do to anybody. You have to be aware, you have to be alert. You don't walk down the street in Chicago without understanding that there's cars going down there, that it's dangerous on the highway, isn't it? Have you ever been to Chicago at 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock on a Friday? That's dangerous, right?

'The same thing with football. Football is a violent game. And until guys understand that you're going to take a hit, then it might not with all these points and these guys catching all the balls thinking 'Hey, you guys can't hit me. I can catch the ball free.' A little bit different. Before the guys used to say 'Boy, I'm going to back off that, let the receiver do it.' Now it's the defensive guys backing off of it.

'It's a violent game, everybody knows it. They sign up for it. I wish everybody would kind of look over that.

'Believe me, I don't want to get these guys hurt and injured. But they might have some responsibility that you might get hit, because you are playing football. That's the concern for me.'

Parker was asked what it would have been like had today's rules been in place when he was a player.

'It's different. It's totally different. I wouldn't be able to play the game. But you take those choices. And I understand about the concussion thing, you know what I mean. I had many concussions, so I understand that. But that was the risk that I took, too, because I loved the game of football. So it's the same with anybody else on there. You're taking the risk going out there and that's what you're doing, you know it. You know the risk.'

The thing is, everybody says they know the risks. But nobody really knows what it's like to suffer head injuries until they do. Sometimes they don't know until decades later, and it's pretty awful. I'd rather have football continually tinker with rules with a nod to player safety. If it means the defense is at a disadvantage, well, that applies for both teams.

But I'm appreciative of what Parker said. His football has gone away, at least a little bit. He doesn't like it and said so.

When coaches freely offer opinions and information (no one is expecting state secrets to be shared) as Iowa's did Wednesday, it's easier to give them the benefit of the doubt.

You can pull the curtain back a little bit, and Ferentz has done that over the last two seasons. I'd like the curtain to be taken down altogether. But no one including media mopes do that, so I'll take what I can get.