The Iowa Hawkeyes made some coaching news on the first Tuesday of the college football season by extending the contract of head coach Kirk Ferentz through the 2026 season. Ferentz is all but assured of retiring as Iowa’s head coach, which is nice and all, but you can’t help but feel Iowa was competing against itself with this one.
Iowa’s new contract for Ferentz will pay the longest-tenured head coach in the Big Ten an annual sum of $4.5 million. That makes him the third-highest-paid coach in the Big Ten, squeezing by Penn State head coach James Franklin but still trailing Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh and Ohio State’s Urban Meyer by a sizable amount Iowa will never come close to sniffing.
The only coach who arguably deserves to be paid more than Ferentz in the Big Ten is Mark Dantonio of Michigan State, who recently revised his contract and is now being paid between $3.67 million and $4.3 million per year through the 2020 season. Dantonio and Michigan State topped Ferentz and Iowa in the Big Ten championship game last season.
Look, Ferentz is a nice enough guy, and he has done a solid job as Iowa’s head coach since taking over the program, and it is nice for Iowa to find ways to keep Ferentz happy. And maybe Iowa is being honest with itself in realizing Ferentz is best suited for the job the program has to offer. It’s not like any other big name coach would likely fly in and turn Iowa into a legitimate playoff contender in the blink of an eye.
At the end of the day, it’s still Iowa. It’s not Ohio State or Alabama or Florida State. The ceiling for success at Iowa may have been reached under Ferentz. Is sticking with the status quo usually a good thing? That depends on how realistic it is to change the status quo.
Ferentz took over the job at Iowa in 1999. Since then, Iowa has finished in the top 10 five times and outside the top 25 11 times. It’s a funny thing at Iowa. They can be a mediocre team (at best) with regularity, but when they get things going well for them, they turn in a fantastic season. It goes in cycles for Iowa. When the good times are rolling, they are rolling with the best of them.
Unfortunately, Iowa is currently going through a drought in the postseason wins column. Ferentz hasn’t won a postseason game since the 2010 season. That is ancient history for most programs around the country, but not at Iowa.
Maybe Iowa is satisfied with how things are with Ferentz. Maybe they can’t do any better than have Ferentz as head coach. Maybe that’s all OK if you are Iowa.
