Well well well, here we are again, folks. Back to the Kirk recaps, but it’s not game week, it’s (the day after) Signing Day! Let’s see what Kirk Ferentz had to say about the end of the season and the future of the program, shall we? (Spoiler alert, he’s not hanging it up this offseason — no surprise there, but you never know!)
Also, I’d be remiss if I did not give credit where it is due: I thoroughly enjoyed the shellacking of Nebraska on national television. Very, very fun. Yes, this season has a lot of what ifs, but it is extremely pleasing that one of those what if’s is not about beating Nebraska, or even about the fact that they played us close. Just a thorough beatdown in every phase of the game, and it was beautiful. -wipes tear from eye-
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Anyway, let’s focus on the future now so check out the full transcript HERE and my highlights below.
Q. Kirk, two-part question. When do you plan on doing your individual meetings with the players? Again, I know it’s early, it feels like, but with the portal and everything, when do you do those individual meetings?
KIRK FERENTZ: That’s actually what we’ve been doing or are doing right now. We’ll get together as a staff tomorrow afternoon and just pull in information, see what’s going on. Obviously if there’s something dramatic, I think I’d know that by now, or at least at this point.
It’s all preliminary. I just mentioned, college football has become a business, and one thing I encouraged our guys during the season is there’s a business time and there’s a football time, and hopefully everybody is here to play football and really be part of a team. So take care of business when it’s business time.
This is a business month for everybody. That began a long time ago, but hopefully our guys haven’t been too active. But there’s going to be poaching and all that stuff going on. That’s just part of what we do right now.
When I say we do, I’m not including us, but college football collectively. It’s all going on.
Just some interesting logistical info here that we don’t always hear about during the season. I like learning about how the team operates from a “business” perspective here. Because it is definitely a business!
Q. You talk about how important it is to get players on campus, and I know the recruiting calendar has changed almost yearly at this point, but with it only being open two weeks and it goes to the middle of January, how do you plan on attacking the portal when you talk about getting the guys on campus and doing all that? Do you have a preliminary idea of how you’re going to go about that?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, you have to be active in the portal. It has been helpful to us. I think about a guy like Jacob Gill, I’ll mention him, who’s been with us for two years, and doesn’t have franchise numbers, if you will, putting it in those terms, but the value he’s added, I’m talking about the leadership on our football team, he’s a big part of that. He embodies everything you want in a football player. He has been such a great contributor.
We’re always looking to help our football team. We will be. It is interesting, whatever the window is, it’s pretty quick in January. We may be playing cards and watching soap operas here the next couple weeks, but I know what we’ll be doing early January. We’ll be very active in that.
So yeah, it’s a whole new world. This is another twist and turn of college football, and I don’t know if it’ll stay like this moving forward, but we’ll deal with it as it comes just like you do everything else.
Poor Jacob Gill, catching a stray here. I wonder why he doesn’t have franchise numbers, Kirk? Could it be anything to do with the fact that your wide receivers coach has as much experience playing wideout as I do?
For the record, I don’t think Gill is that great of a receiver but he certainly could have — and should have — had better numbers this season than he did.
Q. What is your message to recruits that ask about your future as head coach here, and are you definitively — sounds like you are, definitively going to coach the Hawkeyes in 2026?
KIRK FERENTZ: Well, yeah. I hope so. Unless you know something I don’t know.
I just tell them the truth. I feel really good. I had no idea what it feels like to be 70. Now I do, however many months it’s been. It doesn’t feel any different than when I was 60. I feel good physically. I’ve got permission from my wife to keep doing this, and it’s what I like doing. I really like it and enjoy doing it.
Unless we just screw this up beyond repair, which we’re trying to do right now in college football, I don’t envision stopping anytime in the near future. It’s what you do. I don’t golf, and when I did, I stunk, so I don’t see going back to that. That’s irreparable, too. My golf game is just awful.
Well, there’s your answer, folks. Not necessarily the answer I’m looking for, but the state of the program could be a lot worse. I wonder if things would be different had they dropped a game to MSU or Nebraska, but alas.
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The year will be 2050 and Kirk Ferentz will peacefully in his bed after a late November win against Nebraska for the team’s 8th win of the year instead of working on his golf game.
Q. I was curious, with the evolving landscape of college football, the expanded playoff, how, if any, the way the program views its goals have changed because from when I have heard, when it was a 14 playoff, the goal was Big Ten Championship. Now you could argue that it’s easier to make the College Football Playoff than it is to win the Big Ten Championship. Has the way the program views its goals changed at all or your messaging? Is it the same, different? How have you approached that?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, our goal has always been to win every game. If we’ve got games scheduled, we’re going to try to win them. That’s kind of what I’m referring to.
I saw this coming years ago just when they went to the four, and I think I said on record, I preferred the two-game thing, only because as soon as we went to four, that’s where all the focus went, and a lot of bowl games were considered, quote-unquote, meaningless, insignificant, all that kind of stuff.
It flies in the face of the way I guess I was raised. The beauty of the game is competition. The beauty of the game is building a team and being part of something bigger than you. If that’s your end goal — the one thing it hasn’t changed, only one team is going to come out on top. No matter how we slice this thing and dice it, it’s going to be one team is going to win the championship.
It used to be two that got to compete for it, now it’s four, then it went to 12, and it’s going to keep expanding. I get that. But our program goal, we want to win anything — if we’re going to get beat, we’re going to try to win.
But the bigger picture, the three things that have been important from day one are graduation, first and foremost — I know everybody says that but it is true. The second thing is being a good citizen, a positive citizen hopefully, on campus, the team, anything you’re a member of. The third thing is maximizing your football experience. To me, it’s as simple as that. If we’re doing it right, some years we might have a realistic chance to get there, and then other years maybe not.
I think it’s a trap if you start chasing all of those exterior things, me personally. All you can do is do your best and try — we’re trying to do our best each and every week, and it breaks it down to the day, just maximizing days. But that’s all you can do.
If you’re good enough, you’re good enough, and if you’re not, you’re not. Other people, we’ve have plenty of people judging us. It’s never been an issue, fans and other people on top of that. And you can’t control how people view you, either.
But I can assure you we’re trying to win. That’s our goal is to win. But it’s a bigger picture than that, too. Because again, ultimately only one team is going to win. I do know that. In the NFL you have a one out of 32 shot. In our deal, I think there’s 68 teams in Power Four schools? What do they call the other ones? Group of Five, okay. So Group of Five sometimes whatever number that is, and their odds are probably a little less than ours.
Only one team is going to come out happy. It’s like pro football. Figured that out a long time ago.
I get what Kirk is saying here, I really do. And he’s right. But also his job is to win football games and compete for championships. Indiana has proved that with the right hire (granted, Cignetti may have been one in a million but still), you can compete instantly for a spot in the expanded playoff. We’re getting to a point where Iowa will need a playoff appearance if there’s ever any hope of continuing to get ANY elite recruits.
No, you’re not going to win the whole thing every year, but if I would have told you 5 years ago that Indiana would make the playoff TWICE before Iowa did, would you have believed me? I wouldn’t have believed myself!
Now onto the actual signing day aspect…
Q. I’m curious what it’s like building synergy with Tim in terms of what he’s looking for in a quarterback, what you guys are finding and who you’re reaching out to. What did you find in the quarterback you signed today, and where you guys stand in terms of the quarterback room? Do you want to add to that through the portal, through possibly a late signing?
TYLER BARNES: Yeah, the first thing you knew with Tim is time. Like a lot of meeting time because Tim is going to talk a lot, which is one of his biggest strengths, and I’m not joking. I think he was with Tradon four and a half hours watching film in the offices. That’s why guys love Tim, because his passion, his energy. If you can’t notice it and feel it, we’re definitely on the wrong guy.
But we had a young man that was committed to us for a little bit over a year who de-committed in the summer, and we had some guys on the board we felt good about. Tim probably didn’t want to hear at the time, but my biggest thing was let’s be patient, let’s go into the season and let’s see some senior film on guys. There’s going to be guys that rise. There’s going to be guys that are at schools where maybe the season is not going well and there could be some coaching changes.
I’m glad we did. We watched six to eight guys we kind of honed in on that we really presented to Tim. I probably had Tradon as my top guy. He’s a bigger kid, 6’4″, 210 right now, really live arm, whippy arm, can really throw it. His stats, if you go back the last three years, are pretty gaudy. It’s kind of incredible.
Didn’t get a chance to meet the kid and talk to him, and that was a tough one, because Boise State at the time, they had their hooks into him pretty good, and we haven’t really recruited Utah. That was the last guy we actually went out to visit in Utah was Zach Wilson, another quarterback.
But the biggest thing was trying to build that relationship, and then once we got him here, just as Coach says, once we can get a kid here, especially a quarterback or an offensive player and you put him in front of Tim, you feel pretty good about your chances. The same can be said for Mark. When we got Mark here last year in the winter, I knew about two hours into that meeting with Tim, okay, we’re in a good spot, we’re going to get this done.
In terms of the quarterback room, right now we feel good with where it’s at. We’d love to get Tradon here early. He’s going to stay and play basketball this winter. I’m going to continue to poke him a little bit. I know Coach says we don’t push guys to come early. I’m going to keep trying to push that one and we’ll see what happens.
Unless there’s some type of movement in our room, we feel good about where we’re at and we plan to roll with the guys we’ve got in there.
Interesting bit of news here re: the quarterback room being stable as far as the staff knows. Let’s hope that is the case, but at the same time, if Hank Brown left, I wouldn’t care at all…I’m all in on Hecklinski as our guy going into next season.
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Let’s end with these two “business” questions:
Q. You mentioned being a lot more businesslike with the recruiting nowadays. What do you look for in a kid, especially with this being more of a developmental program, that you can tell that kid is going to stick around for one, two, three, four years even though he might not play right off the start? How do you tell and project that far in advance that the kid is not going to go transfer out if he’s not playing for a few years?
TYLER BARNES: I don’t think you ever know for certain, especially in this day and age. It still comes down to, we’re going to talk to everybody we can in the school. We still rely on high school head coaches. A lot of places don’t. They’re going to say who’s your agent, I’ll talk to your agent, and you work through recruiting there. That is part of the process, but that’s way down the road for us.
Then you have to get them on campus. You’ve got to get a feel for who they are, what their family is like, the dynamic there. Again, the multi-sport thing is huge.
Chad just mentioned we have eight four-stars. I didn’t even know that. Again, we don’t recruit off of rankings and stars and all that, and that’s great. I’m glad we can celebrate it. I don’t get any type of raise or neither does our recruiting staff for that.
But you have to dig into who the kid is, and at some point you’re going to figure out if their values match ours. Now more than ever, you can figure out real quick if their values don’t match ours. If the money and the numbers are the most important thing, that’s not who we are.
We have a bunch of guys on this roster that if they wanted to hit the portal, they’re going to get paid a ton. Same with our staff members. There’s not a single person back there in the hallway that hasn’t been offered a job with more money or more prestige somewhere, but there’s a reason we all continue to stay here and don’t leave, and that’s true with our players, too.
A big part of it, too, is when we get guys here getting them around our players and letting our players feel it out, too, like hey, what did you think of this kid. Do you think he’s going to fit. Do you think he’s a guy you want inside your locker room every day. We take their feedback just as much as anybody else.
It’s continuing to be diligent, and call us old school, call us slow that we don’t offer too many people or are as quick as other schools, but for us, it’s a recipe and a formula that’s worked for us, and we’re obviously going to continue to stick with it as much as possible.
That’s the same in the portal, too. The portal has just expedited. It’s speed dating on steroids where you’ve got to do all that while you’re trying to figure out who it is, get your hooks into a kid. But you have to do it at a faster clip.
I like reading about this because I think, as I have said before, that this is actually the smartest approach to take when it comes to the current age of college football. The relationships and development are going to matter a ton. You use recruiting to get your main guys, and then you fill in holes in the transfer portal.
Q. For you guys as a recruiting staff, how difficult is it to be able to put together a plan when again, you don’t know who’s going to end up entering the portal, whether guys you want to pursue, guys that end up leaving the team, what spots are going to be available, and with the new portal window that I wish they would just settle in because it seems like it just changes every single year. How do you approach making a game plan, sticking by it, and how quickly are you going to be able to adapt if a guy leaves unexpectedly or you get some traction with a guy that just ends up entering the portal? How are you as a staff collectively approaching this?
TYLER BARNES: Obviously it’s fluid no matter what it is, and that’s a big part of my job is going into every season I’ve got our scholarship chart and I’ve got a million different color codes for certain things, and there’s some that are flight risk on there, right. You hear from different guys on the team, you hear from people in the building, you can see their demeanor. It’s like, okay, this kid might not be here come January. So you’re building out your roster and your needs based on those. And you don’t want to lose anybody, but come this time of year, everybody talks in this building, and the players are great, but they’re horrible at keeping secrets.
At some point it’s going to get out and you’re going to have an idea, and then it’s just a matter of getting to this time of year where you have kind of those exit interview meetings.
The portal is different this year. One signing day is way too early. This is wild that it’s December 3rd and I’m talking to you guys about our high school class. But two, it’s unique because we have this whole month of December and the portal doesn’t open up for a month from today. There’s just a lot that could happen.
But you have to be fluid. That’s something I’m looking at every single week, and you’re talking to Phil and you’re talking to Tim and you’re talking to the position coaches, and you have to be open and honest with them, like hey, I think so-and-so, I’ve heard this, what kind of beat do you have on this kid who I think he might leave, and we talk about it throughout the year, and certainly after our last game we have a full staff discussion where we’re trying to plan for that.
For the most part, you have a good idea. There’s going to be a surprise or two every year. It just happens. But you’ve just got to be able to adapt and adjust quickly. There’s a couple of spots right now we don’t plan to take transfers at, but that could change in the next five to ten days because something could pop and we’re going to have to kind of rearrange our strategy, and that’s where Rhett does a great job helping my build our transfer board and kind of stacking that, and even spots we know we’re not going to take guys, you’ve still got some names on there just in case.
I could not do this job. It just seems insane with how much it changes on a year to year basis. Let’s hope that things start to stick here at some point because this sounds awful from a consistency perspective.
