Kirk Herbstreit: Kirk Ferentz 'deserves' a statue in Iowa City
- Thread starter hawkeye bb n fb fan
- Start date
A statue should go to the coach who brings Iowa a National Championship. I corresponded with Hayden Fry during the entire time he was at Iowa. Enjoyed and kept the letters and Christmas cards I received from him. I enjoyed him and his sense of Humor. He came to Iowa and changed the atmosphere and the culture of Hawkeye football which had been rated as one of the worst football programs in the nation for nearly 20 years. That is the primary reason I and a huge number of older Hawkeye fans revere him. Modern Hawkeye fans simply can't understand what it feels like to be so bad that a successful year is to win 3 games in a season and two of them were Northwestern. Fry brought fire and passion to Kinnick where it hadn't been in many years. I'm not a huge fan of KF because of the Schizoid nature of Iowa's winning and losing and his continual conservative, no frills style of ball. However, he has maintained the team at a level significantly above where they have been in the past. So, I say again, when Iowa wins a National Championship, the coach who gets them there deserves a statue.
This is a very respectful, poignant and well delivered post.
The only thing I would say to it is....that's just the point; Hayden Frys teams were just as schizoid, had just as many low-scoring games and just as many up-and-down seasons with out as many highs as KF, yet people remember it differently?
That's what these guys are upset about they are not against Hayden. They probably don't even like KF better than Hayden, they just get tired of the revision of reality.
Hell think about it for a minute...three of the games Iowa and Hayden are most remembered for are 10–7 verse Nebraska, 9-7 verse Michigan and 12–10 against Michigan?!
If I told you Hayden had a similar if not more games scored under 17 points would you believe it?
Amazing- causing great surprise or wonder; astonishing.
I'd say some of their wins and seasons were a great surprise or astonishing, wouldn't you? And some of their loses were amazing/astonishing as well, so I would think it's safe to say that 'He's done amazing things at Iowa'.
Excellent post. So often when people talk about the revisionist historians they aren't Hayden fry haters. In fact just the opposite. But it's tiresome to here the revisionist historians act like Hayden Fry was a better coach than he actually was.
Always love when people bring up how boring Ferentz teams are in the Hayden vs. Kirk debate. I guess they forgot about those third and ten draws.
Something I haven't heard brought up at all in this debate is it's not real easy being the guy after the guy. Ferentz seems to get no credit for that. But to be honest I think both guys fit perfectly in their time frame as Iowa football coaches.
When Hayden took over we needed a charismatic guy. When Ferentz took over we needed a guy to right the ship. Also remember Hayden was not that good at taking criticism at all. In this day and age with the expansion of the sports media and social media I don't think he would do well.
Last edited:
Wow those were some great points and I forgot about Hayden being pretty surly at times. I've actually been doing some more breakdowns that I'm gonna start another thread on you'll be surprised.
