It's good to be the Iowa AD right now

LOS ANGELES — Iowa's gorgeous black-and-gold equipment semi-truck parked outside the Los Angeles Convention Center on the Wednesday before the Rose Bowl. Near the tail of the truck stickers from each bowl game Iowa has attended under head coach Kirk Ferentz are lined underneath a giant Nike swoosh.

There's one from the 2001 Alamo Bowl, Ferentz's first bowl game as head coach. The staff has already stuck one on from the Rose Bowl, which pits the No. 5 Hawkeyes (12-1) against No. 6 Stanford on Friday.

There's one missing. Take a guess.

Wait, you don't even have to guess. You know it's the 2015 TaxSlayer Bowl. Tennessee crushed the Hawkeyes, 45-28. In an SI.com post, offensive line coach Brian Ferentz called it the 'HawkSlayer Bowl.' It's like the hangover that everyone just got over.

All it took was a 12-0 regular season, an appearance in the Big Ten championship game and the Hawkeyes first Rose Bowl appearance since 1991. That's all.

Pile this on top of Tuesday night's result at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, where Iowa basketball beat No. 1 Michigan State, 83-70. It was Iowa's first win against a No. 1 team since Iowa beat Connecticut at Madison Square Garden in 1999, and the first in Iowa City — at The Fieldhouse or Carver-Hawkeye Arena — in program history.

How cool is that for Iowa athletics director Gary Barta?

'To answer your question, it's way cool,' Barta said.

The contrast from last year at this time is startling. Barta was besieged with angry emails — he estimated 3,000 to 4,000 — registering varying degrees of disgust with Iowa football, head coach Kirk Ferentz and him. Barta talked with reporters after the TaxSlayer result and then in one-on-one interviews with a few select reporters in the days following. He said he'd never seen as much heat as he had during that time.

Now, Barta had a hard time recalling the latest email that suggested a football coaching change.

'I can't remember,' Barta said. 'My guess is that somebody did at some point this season, but not many, especially compared to last year. A lot last year, probably thousands.'

On Wednesday morning, Ferentz collected his second national coach of the year award, the Bobby Dodd Trophy (it honors the head football coach whose program 'embodies the award's three pillars of scholarship, leadership and integrity, while also having success on the playing field throughout the season'). That goes along with the Eddie Robinson coach of the year award and the Big Ten coach of the year award.

Again, the contrast from HawkSlayer and the 7-6 2014 is astounding.

'It wasn't the Titanic sinking last November,' Ferentz said. 'Now, if you lived in Iowa, you might have felt that way, and I get that. I understand that totally. I'm not tone deaf. But a lot of times in life when things seem like the sky might be falling, it usually isn't. When you look at things and just kind of make some smart adjustments and listen to the people that are around you that have good input, usually things are addressable.'

Ferentz is now up to $150,000 in incentives for coach of the year awards. That's good, too, Barta said.

'That's what it's (Ferentz's contract, which pays him $4 million through the 2019 season) designed for,' Barta said. 'We want to have all the success we can.'

Let's go back to the contrast. Last year, there were an estimated 5,000 Iowa fans in Jacksonville, Fla., for the TaxSlayer Bowl. This year, Iowa had 54,000 ticket requests for the Rose. Barta didn't know what the actual count might be, but you'll see large pockets of black and gold in the Rose Bowl on Friday.

'I know for some fans it was hard (to get to Los Angeles),' Barta said. 'I've talked to several who missed flights and who had to hop in their car and drive here. Now, that's being a fan, to make that trip.'

Barta was asked if that would help with 'priority points' for season and bowl tickets in the future. He laughed.

'We'll have to factor that into the points system,' he said.

More contrast. Iowa went through a 17 percent drop in season tickets before the season started. The renewal process hasn't started, so Barta didn't have a number for 2016, which will include Kinnick Stadium games against Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska. So, yes, Barta does expect a bump off the 12-0 and Rose Bowl 2015.

Last year, Barta was asked about Ferentz's buyout and if the contract factored in his decision to keep him at Iowa. Wednesday, Barta was asked about a contract rollover or even the possibility of an extension.

'Evaluate after the season is over, right now we're getting ready for the Rose Bowl,' Barta said. 'I'm not trying to avoid the question, that's truly where we're at. We'll sit down when the year is over and look at what went well, what we want to do to try to get better and we'll go from there.'

Last year, Barta was asked about Ferentz and a buyout, which, by association, cast a pall over his job performance.

In an interview with Gazette reporter Vanessa Miller, new UI president Bruce Harreld gave a thumbs up to everyone and all of it.

On Ferentz and Barta, he said, 'They are long-term members of our family, and I intend to keep it that way.'

In a weird way, maybe the HawkSlayer Bowl was the best thing that happened to the Hawkeyes going into 2015.

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