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Brian Ferentz knows the Iowa way.

Take that back

LoL.

I voted Parker. I think he deserves a shot.

I do strongly suspect that Kirk Ferentz may decide to step down after this year. His son simply cannot continue as OC so what does he have to stay for?

There is this weird stat that counts the total number of wins as a head football at a Big Ten conference school.,  where Kirk Ferentz is currently 4th.

Stagg - 232 wins
Hayes - 205
Bo - 194
Ferentz -  189
Paterno -  162
Fry -  143

So there is a couple things wrong with this stat in my opinion.   It counts all wins,  conference and non-conference, while they are head coach at a Big Ten school.  So all the wins Paterno had before PSU joined the Big Ten don't count.  But all the conference wins and non-conference wins Joe had while PSU was a part of the Big Ten do count.

Now if you look at conference wins only
Hayes - 153
Bo -  143
Stagg - 115
Ferentz - 115

So let's say Ferentz wins 5 conference games this year.  That would tie him for 3rd with Bo for the first stat.  That would also put him in 3rd in total conference wins ahead of Stagg.  That would also leave him with 194 wins while at Iowa.

So maybe he comes back 1 more year to get 200 total wins at Iowa.?  But in the end I don't he would stick around just to pile up wins.  We have seen that ruin too many coaches reps when they hang on too long. 

So there is a couple things wrong with this stat in my opinion.  

A couple more, too... Comparing career stats against previous eras where there were fewer games played each season, fewer bowl games, etc, is the biggest one. 

And then with Kirk the bigger issue is that he has only been allowed to amass those wins because he's just good enough to not get fired--and he's only just good enough to not get fired because their stupid AD made him too expensive to fire. 

It kinda seems like he doesn't want to be there, the fans don't want him to be there, but he wants to force the school to fire him and pay the buyout b/c his son has proven himself unemployable going forward so he needs a nest egg to pass down to Brian when he dies. 

I think we all agree that the OC situation is laughable and needs to be updated but I would caution Iowa fans a bit about getting too excited about moving on from Kirk Ferentz.  

In the last 45 years (1979-2023) Iowa has only had two head football coaches.  Both were over .600 overall and right around .600 in league games but lets look at some perspective:

In the last 100 years Iowa has had only 14 head coaches.  Three of them: Evashevski (3), Fry (3) and Ferentz (2) won at a .600 clip and won multiple league titles.  The other 11 had a combined zero league titles and the very best of those other 11 only barely exceeded .500.  

In the 18 years prior to Fry's arrival Iowa had four coaches and none of them won at even a .400 clip.  

I think we all agree that the OC situation is laughable and needs to be updated but I would caution Iowa fans a bit about getting too excited about moving on from Kirk Ferentz. 

In the last 45 years (1979-2023) Iowa has only had two head football coaches.  Both were over .600 overall and right around .600 in league games but lets look at some perspective:

In the last 100 years Iowa has had only 14 head coaches.  Three of them: Evashevski (3), Fry (3) and Ferentz (2) won at a .600 clip and won multiple league titles.  The other 11 had a combined zero league titles and the very best of those other 11 only barely exceeded .500. 

In the 18 years prior to Fry's arrival Iowa had four coaches and none of them won at even a .400 clip. 

By going back 100 years you are just barely missing one of Iowa's golden runs from 1921-22 under legendary coach Howard Jones. Jones went undefeated in both 1921 and 1922,  winning back to back conference titles and one mythical national championship, at least in retroactive polls.

Jones coached at Iowa from 1916-1923.  After 1923 Jones left  to coach USC from 1925-1940.where he won 4 national titles.  Jones had a career record of 194–64–21. 

I know.  I stopped there specifically to NOT include Jones.  I guess you could call that "cherry picking" but I'm looking at a full century. 

Without Jones, Iowa has three successful and 11 unsuccessful coaches in the last 100 years.  With Jones they have four successful and 11 unsuccessful coaches in the last 108. 

That does not substantially alter my underlying point which is that when Iowa replaces Ferentz the likelihood that they get another Jones/Evashevski/Fry is not very good. 

I know.  I was not disagreeing.  I just thought it was interesting that's all since it was literally 101 years ago when Howard Jones won back to back conference titles for Iowa.  That's all I was trying to say.  I guess it probobly looked like I was arguing but that was not my intention. 

I could have also brought up, just for entertainment purposes,  Iowa's 1939 season too,  where Nile Kinnick won the Heisman and Iowa was the highest ranked team in the Big Ten,  but that also does not change the overall point.  1939 was clearly a one year wonder for Iowa and technically,  it's Big Ten record that year was not the conference champion.  Although some story tellers about 1939 like to embelish it as kind of a virtual tie for first place because Iowa and OSU both had 1 loss.  It makes Kinnick's Heisman story a little more inspiring, I guess.

It kinda seems like he doesn't want to be there, the fans don't want him to be there, but he wants to force the school to fire him and pay the buyout b/c his son has proven himself unemployable going forward so he needs a nest egg to pass down to Brian when he dies.

There's some parallels to the White House situation only Kirk' is much brighter than Brandon - sad but true