Stoops and Ferentz at same restarting point

The parallels between the football programs at Iowa and Oklahoma are many.

Both programs have head coaches who just finished their 16th season at their current job. Former Iowa player Bob Stoops has had the Oklahoma job since the 1999 season, and so has Kirk Ferentz at Iowa.

Both have enjoyed a lot of highs. Stoops' record is 168-44. That covers nine Big 12 titles, nine Top Ten finishes, and the 2000 national-championship. Ferentz's numbers aren't as gaudy, but there were two Big Ten championships and four Top Ten finishes. No objective person would say winning big is just as easy at Iowa as at Oklahoma.

However, here we are at the end of Year 16 for both, and similar public discontent is found at both places. Stoops is coming off an 8-5 season that rivals the worst he's had since his first season at OU. Ferentz's Hawkeyes were 7-6. In the preseason, both were projected to be much better than they performed. The Sooners were believed to be a national-title contender. Iowa was the pick of many to win the Big Ten West.

Then there were ugly bowl results. Oklahoma went to the Russell Athletic Bowl, a comedown for Sooner fans used to the finer things in postseason life. OU got shelled by Clemson, 40-6. It was an embarrassment.

Iowa went to the TaxSlayer Bowl, not what anyone had in mind back in August. The Hawkeyes got drilled by Tennessee, 45-28.

Both programs had already undergone several coaching changes in the previous few years. Stoops had never fired an assistant coach until January 2012, when he brought back brother Mike Stoops to be the defensive coordinator. But in 2013 he fired two assistants, and within the last few days has dismissed co-offensive coordinators Josh Heupel and Jay Norvell.

The stability of Ferentz's staff was something that frequently was noted in the program's success, but circumstances led to him needing new coordinators when Ken O'Keefe left to join the Miami Dolphins and Norm Parker retired. There were several other changes in the last three years, and Ferentz fired assistants Lester Erb and Erik Campbell two years ago. He moved offensive line coach Reese Morgan to defensive line coach, and hired his son, Brian Ferentz, to coach the O-line.

Yet, like at Oklahoma, nothing has returned to what you would call stability. We wait to find out what changes, if any, Ferentz will make this off-season. It's hard to imagine there won't be any given the deficiencies that manifested themselves this season, and were all too clear in the resounding loss to Tennessee.

What Stoops did Wednesday, however, was something proactive. He held a press conference and here were his opening remarks:

'I just want to start out by expressing my disappointment, anger at the way the season went. Definitely a lot of sleepless nights. When you've been a part of something for the last 15, 16 years in building the success and the championship tradition that we've had, when you don't reach those goals it's really unacceptable.

'I take accountability, responsibility for all of it. It always starts with me and ends with me. Whenever we've had success here or failure, the bottom line is I'm the first one to be held accountable and responsible for it.”

Last year, Stoops fired tight ends/offensive tackles coach Bruce Kittle, a former Iowa teammate and longtime friend. This week it's Heupel and Norvell. Heupel was the quarterback of his national-title team. Norvell was also Stoops' college teammate, and had been on the OU staff since 2008.

Whether the firings and the subsequent replacements help the Sooners regain a clamp on the Big 12 remains to be seen. It's easy for him to say the accountability and responsibility is all on him when he keeps his $4.75 million-a-year job and fires others (but not his brother, now-co-defensive coordinator Mike Stoops).

It's not like the Sooners' defense was national-championship quality. But Bob Stoops did promote Jerry Montgomery, a former Iowa defensive tackle and Northern Iowa assistant coach, to co-defensive coordinator and called Montgomery 'a rising star in this profession.”

At the very least, Stoops did make swift and decisive changes, and faced his Oklahoma public to get across the message that the fire to win still burns in him. He also repeatedly said he didn't do a good enough job, that he has to be better. How that plays down there, we'll see.

It sounds like a lot of OU supporters aren't very happy. They want to go to the national playoffs and nothing less. They can't and won't accept that private schools TCU and Baylor are on top of the Big 12 right now.

Just firing coaches and hiring new ones isn't enough. The head man has to change with the times. That's Stoops, that's Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech, that's anybody who is in any competitive line of work.

Which brings us to Iowa. I think 98.6 percent of Hawkeye fans who care about such a thing want a change in offensive coordinator. The Ferentz-Greg Davis marriage simply hasn't worked. Why would anyone presume it would in the future?

At the end of the day, it has always been Ferentz's offense. Is he willing to open the door to an innovative coordinator and willing to give that person the rope to truly change the way the Hawkeyes operate on that side of the ball? Is he willing to let someone else dictate who quarterbacks? History suggests no. But necessity, as Plato said, is the mother of invention. And there's a lot of necessity right now.

Most importantly, though, you have to be able to recruit. The difference between Tennessee (a 7-6 team itself) and Iowa wasn't schemes and strategy, on either side of the ball. It was talent and speed. Given that Wisconsin lost 59-0 to Ohio State, one shudders to think what would have happened had the Hawkeyes played the Buckeyes, who looked more-SECish than Alabama when OSU beat the Crimson Tide in the Sugar Bowl last week.

Just hiding out in the Big Ten West, perhaps as unimpressive a division as the Power Five conferences can offer right now, isn't enough. Iowa didn't have the talent to hang with LSU last year, nor did it last Friday against Tennessee.

Just calling yourself a 'developmental program” won't satisfy anyone these days, no matter how true it is. In fact, it's alienating. Iowa needs something to sell kids. An offense that doesn't hurt spectators' eyes would be a start. How do you get that? The only way I see is to identify a coordinator who can masterfully strategize and communicate, and let him do his job.

The greatest years of Hayden Fry's era at Iowa were when Bill Snyder ran the offense. Where's the next Snyder? Find that man.

That's really simplifying things, of course. But hey, Iowa State had Tom Herman before he became Tom Herman, Big Guy Offensive Coordinator at Ohio State (and now head coach at Houston).

Oklahoma has the 'Help Wanted” sign out for offensive coaches to match wits with the dynamos at Baylor (48.2 points per game) and TCU (46.5). At OU, being 21st in the nation at 36.4 points per game isn't good enough. You would think brilliant offensive minds already have forwarded their applications. If you want to be the heir apparent at a superpower, go to Oklahoma and get the offensive machinery whirring.

Iowa was 71st at 28.2 ppg and 66th in total offense at 400.1 yards per game. Those used to be pretty good numbers. In fact, they were improvements of 23 yards and 2 points a game from last year's 8-4 team, and it was five more points a game than Iowa's 11-2 team of 2009. But they were middle-of-the-pack stats in the 2014 Big Ten.

It's not like defense and special teams should get any kind of a pass. The 25.6 points per game the Hawkeyes allowed were almost twice what they yielded in 2008 and the most they've allowed since 2000. The color of the flag that sends up is bright red.

There's no Texas pipeline for talent to Iowa. There's no pipeline from anywhere. That's why whomever coaches the Hawkeyes always needs a deck of recruiting aces and coaches who are near the top of their fields. You have that, you're good. You don't, and you better keep the revolving door spinning until the right guys step through.