Straining to beat a bad Rutgers team that struggled to beat New Mexico and losing to a 1-AA team is NEVER ACCEPTABLE for a program with the resources, tradition, fan base, and conference affiliation of Iowa! The "aw shucks, it happens sometimes. . We're just Iowa" doesn't change that. Some humility is good, but an absence of any self-respect as a football program is no good. One of the reasons that, after all of these years of being almost a top-10 or top-15 program, we're still in "almost really good" category is this tolerance for ABYSMAL performance like we've seen in the last two weeks. Wisconsin made the leap - they won a number of Rose Bowls and went to a few more that they didn't win (and they were in way worse shape when Richter and Alvarez started over there than we were when Hayden arrived, right?). MSU made the leap - they finally won a Rose Bowl for themselves. Purdue failed to make the leap - they had their shot in Pasadena in 2001 and blew it (though with FAR fewer resources and advantages than we have). Illinois also failed to make the leap - they blew their shot in 2008, though also with somewhat fewer resources and historical advantages than Iowa.
For those of you who are troubled by people's use of pronouns here on this board, we're all part of the team as we ALL have our admittedly very small roles to play in the success of the program. Iowa, moreso that a Notre Dame or a USC or even Michigan is more reliant on smaller donors and a higher rate of engagement among alumni, the people of Iowa, and out-of-state fans otherwise loosely or unattached to the state (when their lucky) be successful. In a program that actually has aspirations of winning championships, just making occasional feel-good trips to championship games should NOT be the standard when we pay our coach $4.5 million TO RECRUIT THE PLAYERS who are supposed to annhialating these third-tier opponents. There should be no luck involved in playing those types of games. I understand that mild upsets happen and that you can't win every game, but first-rate programs don't lose to 1-AA schools EVER without MAJOR REPRECUSSSIONS. This idea that "we did reely gud verse Spartins in championships las year and we gave it a prity gud try and then we jus got a bad luk verse Stanfurd" is galactically stupid.
Coach Ferentz, by all accounts, is an outstanding human being and member of the University and Iowa City community. He has provided quality service at many times in the past to the University and the people of Iowa. At the same time, there have been MAJOR problems with the passing game and broader but related problems with recruiting for the better part of TEN YEARS now. The whole "aw shucks, we're just Iowa, we just work hard and hit you in the mouth" routine isn't gonna cut it on its own in the future. I'm not asking for tackiness - tacky approaches, tacky press conferences, tacky new uniforms every week, cheating, excessively obnoxious and rude tactics (OSU running through the OU warmups a few games, for example, was a total scumbag move). The world is changing, and so I'm just asking for Iowa football to evolve just a bit, even just schematically on the field. Is it possible that these skill players from urban and Sun Belt areas don't want to play for stodgy Grandpa Kirk and Great Uncle Greg who just don't seem to believe in fun, creativity, or change on the field? Now if the recruiting deficit comes down to our refusal to cheat (I get the sense that cheating seems to happen A LOT more then the media lets on in recruiting), then I can see where we just need to shut up and tolerate our 6-5/7-4 level seasons (our schedules will mostly suck without the top Big Ten East teams in the future, so 9 wins in this era can't be lauded as much as 9 wins before our conference became bloated with mediocrity).
We went 12-0 last year playing a POOR schedule against mediocre teams with mediocre talent. I told a friend at the end of the regular season that Iowa needed to prove that they were a first-rate team by BEATING another first-rate team. I was hopeful they were really "that" good but saw no evidence they were anything more than a fraud, a "paper tiger." They not only lost in Indianapolis, they responded so poorly to the opportunity to play in a Rose Bowl that the performance of this supposedly-experienced coaching staff was like a step back in time to 2002 or even Hayden's first Rose Bowl in 1982. HOW COULD YOU NOT HAVE THE PROPER CLEATS READY FOR THE PLAYERS!? Running the table in the Big Ten regular season avoiding the three best teams just doesn't mean what it did in, for example, 2002.
In this case, because of the resources that Iowa provides, recruiting the players, training and them in the off-season, putting the right ones on the field, and coaching them in the game so that they have the best chance to succeed (e.g., not calling three straight runs with 3:30 left up by less than a field goal) is the RESPONSIBILITY OF THE HEAD COACH.
I'm one to let the results speak for themselves. Having blown a lead to lose AT HOME to a DIRECTIONAL SCHOOL FROM NORTH DAKOTA in pathetic fashion, if this team doesn't win at least 9-10 games (at least 6-2 the rest of the way) in this regular season, there needs to be a serious discussion about who ought to be our head coach. And if they can't win 8, barring serious injuries occurring on both sides of the ball and depending on the circumstances of the games, a buyout of this obtuse contract that Kirk just signed may be in order. At the very least, the pressure on Kirk's job had better get ratcheted up to the max for next year if they don't win most of these remaining games (many of them convincingly).
Change in life is sometimes necessary and I've heard that this is sort of the way that the Hayden era ended - the program just kind of withered away until Kirk resuscitated it. Is there such thing as a "mercy firing"?
