Kirk Ferentz's take on college's new era may surprise you ahead of 27th Iowa season

New York Times

10 hours ago

IOWA CITY, Iowa — In the era of college athletics defined by unlimited free agency, revenue sharing and an expanding playoff system, it may be stunning to some that the longest tenured person leading a football program is comfortable with the new status quo.
Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz will lead the Hawkeyes for a 27th season this fall and has acquired a vanilla reputation that can border on stale and resistant to change. But when it comes to paying athletes and allowing them to move around at a whim, Ferentz is more invigorated than many of his peers.
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'In some crazy way, I enjoy all the crazy stuff that's going on the last couple of years here with our game and the landscape and all that,' said Ferentz recently in an exclusive interview with The Athletic. 'It's almost like a challenge in some ways. And then the single best part is just the people you work with, and that hasn't changed.'
The stress of paying athletes, some of whom take a nomadic journey as yearly free agents, has contributed to driving out national championship-winning coaches in football and men's basketball. Ferentz has chosen a different route. He has long supported athlete compensation, especially with soaring media rights revenues in college football.
Iowa football, for instance, directly generated nearly $92 million in the athletic department's 2024 fiscal year financial statement and indirectly brought in around $50 million more in unspecified revenue. Yet in the same fiscal year, only $4.16 million went toward football scholarships.
'I think we all agree, at least I certainly do, that the revenue has really grown at a pace nobody really foresaw, other than maybe (former Big Ten commissioner) Jim Delany 15 years ago,' Ferentz said. 'So, it ought to be redistributed. Whatever the numbers are on that, that's for somebody else to decide. I think this is great.
'This is easily the most interesting time that we really have faced.'
Iowa's competitors have used Ferentz's age against him in recruiting battles for a decade, but he approaches his 70th birthday on Aug. 1 knowing he is one victory shy of tying Ohio State legend Woody Hayes for the Big Ten career record. And not an ounce of quit in him.
In the past, Ferentz responded to questions about his age with a self-deprecating quip or by shrugging it off entirely. Now, he brings up his age first, like anyone nearing a milestone, and he's both reflective and vulnerable.
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'I'm not sure how that happened,' Ferentz said. 'It doesn't seem like it was that long ago when I was in my 40s or 50s. …
'Nobody can predict the future that way, but I guess I would say the odds are better (for) me being here in five years now than they were in '99 or 2000. I'm not trying to put a timeframe on this because nobody can answer that question. I don't know what it feels like to be 73 or 72 or 74. I know what I feel right now, and I feel pretty good. I feel like this is what I still enjoy doing. I enjoy the people I'm with every day.'
But Ferentz can't go too long without invoking dry humor on the topic, especially related to retirement. Five years ago, when the world partially shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he realized how much he loved his sport. He doesn't have hobbies like golf or fishing. Trying to work from home made him — and especially his wife of 45 years — grasp how miserable he could become once he stepped away from coaching.
'I don't want to speak for Mary, but she actually said that 'I'm not sure we're ready for, you know?'' Ferentz said. 'That's kind of her one requisite. Whenever I do quit, I need to have something to go to because she doesn't want me sitting home looking at her all day or asking her stupid questions.'
Many observers would have predicted that day would have come by now. Instead, perhaps guided by his NFL background, Ferentz adapted to the open transfer portal and athlete compensation in part because of his experiences in 2022.
Iowa's Swarm Collective debuted that summer, and it struggled to gain meaningful promotion from the school's athletic department. Ferentz called for the department to prioritize the collective, and when it received only a patronizing nod, the coach fully endorsed it publicly. He also took on an aggressive portal approach that ultimately landed an NCAA violation and a one-game suspension for contacting quarterback Cade McNamara before he entered the transfer portal.
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Concurrently with his pursuit of McNamara, Ferentz also dealt with eight players leaving in the transfer portal in a two-day span, far more than he expected. He said that 'rocked my world a little bit.'
'It was more like a blow to your ego,' Ferentz said. 'It was kind of like getting rejected asking somebody to go to the homecoming dance, and eight girls in a row said no.
'Then two things happened there. No. 1, it dawned on me, if these guys aren't happy here, if they don't think this is the right place for them, it's probably better for all of us if they do transfer. … Then the flip side of that was I started thinking about some of the guys that had joined us.'
Ferentz referenced the lower-level players he brought in previously as graduate or junior college transfers and how they made immediate contributions. He now views the transfer portal through a similar lens. The program can recruit players who are excited to compete for Iowa but do it in a way that fortifies the current roster.
'It's almost a good trade-off rather than having somebody on your team that's not sure they want to be there,' Ferentz said. 'Now you've got guys, they're just excited as hell to be here. So, hey, let's go for it.'
Ferentz blends an aggressive, yet piecemeal, portal approach with his tenets of building a program through traditional recruiting. This offseason, Iowa competed for and landed South Dakota State quarterback Mark Gronowski, who was the FCS player of the year in 2023. The Hawkeyes also added potential starters at left tackle, wide receiver and defensive tackle, plus two backup quarterbacks.
The constant challenges associated with paying athletes could temper the results. Seemingly every day, a player or an agent contacts Ferentz's staff wanting to renegotiate their shared revenue allotment, which has prompted many coaches to leave the industry. Although he hasn't spoken with former colleague Nick Saban, whom he worked with in Cleveland, Ferentz said he was 'intrigued' by men's basketball coaches Tony Bennett at Virginia and Jay Wright of Villanova stepping down in recent years.
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But that's not for Ferentz, at least not yet. He remains inquisitive about new approaches and adjustments, but tries to focus on his daily tasks and players.
'One thing age teaches you is you become a little bit more aware of how much you don't know,' Ferentz said. 'There are certain days where you wonder if you know anything, especially with all the changes in the world. But there's always a puzzle to solve. There's always something to be working on, and I guess I enjoy that.'
Ferentz is under contract through 2030, and neither he nor his program has shown signs of slowing down. Over the past decade, Iowa has 89 wins to rank 11th among Power 4 schools. Over that span, it has four 10-win campaigns and is one of only five programs nationally to win at least eight games in each of the last nine full seasons (Iowa was 6-2 during the 2020 season).
'I'm proud of what the record says over the last 10 years, wins and losses-wise,' Ferentz said. 'We probably don't advocate for ourselves a lot. We don't try to toot our own horns and all that stuff. It's more about the doing. And I know we live in a world right now, we all want to talk about what's going to happen. What's more important is what does happen, and then at least history will document that. And you're never gonna please everybody anyway.'
Ferentz added: 'Some people have asked, why'd you stay? Why didn't you ever leave? I've never had a compelling time to leave. Fortunately, my health has been good enough, and I've got the permission of my wife so far. So those combinations have been good.'