Kirk's coaching tree over the past 25 years is as thin as the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. I'm not sure football has seen anything quite like it. Coaching is a big $ business and most coaches are ambitious guys wanting to reach the top.
While Hayden Fry's staff produced 8 - 10 head coaches, including some Hall of Famers, Kirk's staffs have produced a guy currently working at Culvers, several unemployed former coaches, and a series of "yes" men with no ambition to grow their careers.
Now take a look at the internal pecking order / chain of promotions within the program. Do the best coaches typically to move up? What goes into the decisions to promote?
In evaluating, consider Kirk's admitted "blind eye" toward the racial discrimination situation that rocked the program and led to the firing of his strength coach/best friend. Then consider how the investigation called Kirk out for virtually never appointing black players to the team's "leadership counsel." Did he believe black players were not leaders? With that as foundation, take a look at Kirk's coaching personnel decisions over the years (i.e. who he's promoted and who he's kept on staff despite their failures). It makes you wonder whether black coaches at Iowa are given the same opportunity for advancement as the white coaches.
Take the career paths of Brian Ferentz, Seth Wallace, and LeVar Woods as an example:
Woods. 2008 - retired from the NFL. Immediately came back to work at Iowa. Put in 4 years. In 2012, was elevated to position coach, where he excelled. He's now been in the program 16 years but has yet to receive a promotion. He remains a low level position coach despite coaching some of the best special teams units Iowa has ever had.
Wallace. 2014 - after working at a DIII school in Georgia for a few years while somehow developing no recruiting pipeline there, he was hired as a position coach at Iowa. Just 3 years later, Kirk named him assistant defensive coordinator. He was then named in a racial discrimination lawsuit. In 2023, he was once again promoted to some fake title like assistant head coach, and is now paid DOUBLE what Woods is paid despite not even being a coordinator.
Ferentz. 2012 - came to Iowa at the same time Woods became special teams coach. Because Kirk didn't have a spot for him, Kirk chose to toss aside Iowa's legendary OL coach Reece Morgan (and forced him to switch to DLine coach) to make room for inexperienced Brian. With Brian at the helm, the OL immediately saw a drop off. It was about then that Iowa lost its "bullies of the Big 10" status and its run game suffered. Three years later, Kirk promoted Brian to "running game coordinator," a fake title never used before to help justify a future promotion to OC. The run game under Brian was below average for a Big 10 team. Despite that, just one year after being promoted to run game coordinator, Brian was promotion again to offensive coordinator. He received a doubling of his salary despite having never called a play in his life and Kirk not interviewing another soul for the position. Brian was then named in a racial discrimination lawsuit where clear evidence of wrongdoing was presented. Instead of being fired, Brian was rewarded the following year with his 4th promotion, this time taking on QBs coach duties...a position he admitted he knew nothing about.
One of the above is black. The other two are white. Would it be fair to say the white coaches quickly received promotions while the black coach did not? If so, can you reasonably argue that merit was the basis for the coaching decisions?
Removing Brian from the equation, let's now look at Iowa's worst performing coaches over the past 5 years. WR coach, OL coach, and "QB guru/analyst." Correct? I don't think anyone would argue otherwise. One of the 3 is black, the other two are white. How were they treated? The black got unceremoniously fired. The other two failed coaches have been routinely lavished with praise by Kirk. While firing the WR coach was warranted, it leads the question...how do you fire the WR coach but keep the underperforming OL coach (who had far more talent and experience to work with yet was clearly the weak link on staff)? More perplexing, how do you not only keep, but promote & double the salary of the "QB guru" who was oversaw Petras' senior year and Deacon Hill? Kirk promoted him to WR coach despite never coaching the position or having any track record of improving position group performance.
Iowa already had the whitest, small-town coaching staff in the Power 5. Check out the makeup of the other coaching staffs in the Big 10 and you'll see. Blame it on demographics, fine. Yet when Iowa's OC position opened up this fall, Kirk didn't bother to interview a black candidate. When the WR coach position opened up (a position where 95% of the players are black), not a single black coach was interviewed. Maybe that's a coincidence? Maybe Kirk has never had a black coordinator in his coaching career?
By using the offseason to: (i) replace two outgoing coaches with white guys; (ii) limiting internal promotions to white guys only; and (iii) keeping the underperforming white coaches on staff while firing the black one, is Kirk showing his true colors?
