IOWA CITY — The 2024 season is here. For the dean of FBS head coaches, it must feel about as familiar as an alien invasion.
On Saturday, for the first time in 26 years, Iowahead coach Kirk Ferentz will not lead his Hawkeyes out in a swarm. He's not retiring — he says he doesn't even know how he'll spend the day, and there's no reason to doubt that — but rather serving a self-imposed one-game suspension for the 2022 recruitment of starting quarterback Cade McNamara.
Iowa should beat visiting Illinois State with ease, and by 12:01 Sunday morning, Ferentz's suspension will be nothing more than a strange footnote on a Hall of Fame career; the sort of thing rival fanbases will care about more than any of the principal parties in Iowa City.
Once that hiccup has passed, though, Ferentz will be returning to a landscape that still bears scant resemblance to the world when he took the Iowa job, the big one, in 1999.
FREE: https://iowa.rivals.com/news/kirk-ferentz-isn-t-sailing-to-byzantium-just-yet
On Saturday, for the first time in 26 years, Iowahead coach Kirk Ferentz will not lead his Hawkeyes out in a swarm. He's not retiring — he says he doesn't even know how he'll spend the day, and there's no reason to doubt that — but rather serving a self-imposed one-game suspension for the 2022 recruitment of starting quarterback Cade McNamara.
Iowa should beat visiting Illinois State with ease, and by 12:01 Sunday morning, Ferentz's suspension will be nothing more than a strange footnote on a Hall of Fame career; the sort of thing rival fanbases will care about more than any of the principal parties in Iowa City.
Once that hiccup has passed, though, Ferentz will be returning to a landscape that still bears scant resemblance to the world when he took the Iowa job, the big one, in 1999.
FREE: https://iowa.rivals.com/news/kirk-ferentz-isn-t-sailing-to-byzantium-just-yet