Iowa’s Ferentz a rarity in college football
Longtime coach marvels at support over 18 seasons.
TAMPA — As Kirk Ferentz tells it, he didn’t know the first thing about Iowa football, Iowa the state or the coach he was interviewing with when a mentor made the arrangements and sent him out to Iowa City more than three decades ago.
He also didn’t know then that he’d one day return as the head coach and never leave again.
Ferentz is a rarity in college football today.
I n h i s 1 8 t h s e a s o n a t Iowa, Ferentz will lead the Hawkeyes against Florida in Monday’s Outback Bowl. He is tied with Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops as the longest-tenured coach at the FBS level.
Ferentz says it’s because he found a special place that gave him the patience and commitment to build and run the program his way. Leadership that stuck with him through a 4-19 start over his first two seasons and the occasional lull here and there since.
While coaches around the country routinely jump jobs for the next paycheck or get run off after just a few underwhelming years — in either case acknowledging that it’s merely how the business of college football operates today — Ferentz isn’t going anywhere.
He signed a contract extension before the season that runs into early 2026, and he is so closely identified with not only his school but his (adopted) state like few peers.
But no, he says, there was never any sort of master plan for this.
“I was really off the pickle boat when I ended up in Iowa. Don’t ask me how I got there,” he joked earlier this month. “I was a (graduate assistant) at Pitt in 1980. Somehow, someway in 1981 I became the (offensive) line coach for Hayden Fry, a man I had never heard of in a state that I had to look on a map to see where it was. But little did I know what I was walking into.”
Blueprint for success
Florida coach Jim McElwain talks a lot about the importance of institutional support, from the university leadership on down to every last rung of the staff.
It’s the bedrock of building a program, he believes. Without that support, there cannot be growth or sustained success.
He most recently brought this up in talking about his former boss, Nick Saban, at Alabama and the near-dynasty Saban has built with the Crimson Tide.
And in a different way, he also sees it in his Outback Bowl counterpart.
Fe r e n t z h a s n ’ t wo n a national championship at Iowa like Saban, but he’s built a culture, a “blueprint” that has endured the ebbs and flows for nearly t wo decades now.
“At one time, it was the norm. Now it totally doesn’t happen,” McElwain said of Ferentz’ longevit y at one school.
“And yet, I think he’s a special guy. Obviously, what they’ve done there and what he’s built is pretty fantastic. And shoot, some of the assistants, take a look at their longevity. It’s pretty cool.
“It’s just a blueprint. What you do is, look, there’s a certain set and a certain way of doing things. He does it that way and he does it the right way. They’ve gotten players in there that believe in how he does it and what he’s doing and those guys perform well. That’s a credit to him and the people there believing in him.”
Ferentz especially needed that belief at the start.
After taking over for Fry, who had elevated a floundering Iowa program while going 143-89-6 over 20 seasons there, Ferentz went 1-10 in his first season and winless in Big Ten play. The next year, his Hawkeyes started 1-8 before winning two of their final three games.
Two years later, though, Ferentz led Iowa to an 8-0 Big Ten record, an Orange Bowl appearance and an 11-2 finish.
He’s had five 10-win seasons overall in his tenure, including a 12-2 mark and another perfect 8-0 Big Ten record last fall, but in a different time and place there’s no telling if he would have survived those early struggles.
“I’ll tell you, when we were 1-10 or 2-18, we were testing everybody’s patience,” he said.
“T h a t wa s b e f o r e t h e internet and before all the FireFerentz websites, all that stuff. But again, I’m not sure there are a lot of places where they’d allow you to do that. I’m sure there are other places like it, but there aren’t a lot of them. You can probably count them on one hand.”