Iowa's Kirk Ferentz among upper echelon of ESPN's college football head coach rankings
Amid that, winning games remains the common denominator for measuring success. The Iowa Hawkeyes, under the leadership of head coach Kirk Ferentz, have done a lot of winning. Ferentz's success at Iowa has him among the best active FBS head coaches in ESPN's rankings of the best college football coaches in America.
Entering the 2025 season, ESPN has ranked Kirk Ferentz as the No. 17 head coach in America. He is also the longest-tenured coach in college football, which in itself should earn him a spot, as sticking around for so long only happens when success is achieved.
As a head coach, which also includes a three-year stint at Maine in the early 1990s, Kirk Ferentz owns a 216-145 overall record.
When looking at his time at Iowa, which began in 1999, Ferentz is 204-124 overall with a 128-88 record in Big Ten Play. He has taken Iowa to 22 postseason bowl games, while winning 10 of those contests.
Contact/Follow us @HawkeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Iowa news, notes and opinions. Follow Riley on X: @rileydonald7
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NCAA Scores Major Antitrust Win as Eligibility Rules Upheld
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His college football career began with a lost 2020 season at D-II Grand Valley State in Michigan due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The following year he played in the equivalent of three games at Grand Valley, followed by a full 2022 season there. He then matriculated to Wisconsin and played for the Badgers in 2023 and 2024. Fourqurean would like to play this fall as he could earn, according to court records, as much as $500,000 in NIL deals. Fourqurean might also be paid by Wisconsin through the House settlement's revenue-share feature. But he's ineligible to play since the NCAA's five-year rule (NCAA bylaw 12.8) limits athletes to four seasons of intercollegiate competition in any one sport. Conley, the district court judge, held it was problematic for the NCAA to deny Fourqurean a chance to play another season. He reasoned that Fourqurean, as a D-I football player, is a member of a labor market who can only sell his services to one type of buyer—colleges. Preventing Fourqurean from selling his services to an interested buyer allegedly interferes with the market. St. Eve disagreed. She explained that the NCAA contends the five-year rule is necessary to produce college athletics. Fourqurean contends his 'exclusion from participating in college football' is evidence of anticompetitive effects caused by the rule. The judge found there are problems with Fourqurean's approach. For one, Fourqurean doesn't effectively establish the relevant market for antitrust analysis. He maintains that Alston identified D-I FBS football as a relevant market, but St. Eve disagreed. She wrote 'the Alston Court did not decide the question of market definition,' and stressed Alston concerned an altogether separate topic: rules limiting how schools compensate athletes for education-related costs. 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Former Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher is back in the ACC. Sort of. The ACC Network announced Tuesday that Fisher had been hired as an analyst for the 2025 college football season. Fisher will appear on 'ACC Huddle' and serve as a studio analyst for the network. 'I'm looking forward to joining ACC Network and the 'Huddle' team this season,' Fisher said in an ESPN statement. 'I've always had tremendous respect for this conference, and I'm looking forward to breaking down the action each week with such a talented group.' ESPN also announced that its 'ACC Huddle' show would travel to a top ACC game every weekend. The studio show will be at Clemson in Week 1 as LSU visits the Tigers in primetime on Aug. 30. Fisher has been out of college football since he was fired at Texas A&M with two games to go in the 2023 season. The Aggies paid over $75 million to get out of Fisher's contract after the school had extended him through the 2031 season early in his time with the school. As part of the buyout, Fisher makes over $7 million per year through the 2031 season. If he wants to get back into coaching, a stop as an analyst for a season or two isn't the worst idea. Former Florida coach Dan Mullen was hired at UNLV ahead of the 2025 season after working for ESPN after he left the Gators. And Urban Meyer worked for ESPN for a season after he left Florida before taking over at Ohio State. Fisher spent nearly six seasons at Texas A&M after he infamously left Florida State at the end of the 2017 season as the team scuffled through a disappointing season. Fisher was hired as Bobby Bowden's successor in 2010 and the Seminoles won at least 10 games in six of his first seven seasons with the team. That stretch included an undefeated 2013 season as Florida State won the final BCS title in a 34-31 win over Auburn. The Seminoles made the four-team College Football Playoff the next season after going 13-0 in the regular season, but lost to Oregon in the Rose Bowl. That loss snapped a 29-game win streak that dated back to a Nov. 24 loss to Florida during the 2012 season. Overall, Florida State was 83-23 in Fisher's time with the school. At Texas A&M, the Aggies were 45-25 and failed to win 10 games in a single season.
