What did we learn?
We discuss Noah Fant's decision and the other potential NFL Hawkeyes.
Tom Kakert • HawkeyeReport.com
@hawkeyereport
I know the prevailing opinion of many Iowa fans is been there, done that when it comes to another trip to Tampa and the Outback Bowl.
I get it. I really do.
Having made five previous trips to the Outback Bowl, I think I’ve spent at least a month in the media hotel on Westshore Drive, so I get that some folks want something new and different.
I get that Hawkeye fans on the west coast feel left out once again with visions of the Holiday Bowl dancing in their heads. I think we all thought this would be the year that Iowa and the City of San Diego would meet once again, but it was not to be.
The fact is the Iowa option was the best one for the Outback Bowl this year. Bowls are about one thing over everything else and that’s delivering an audience in the stadium and Iowa fans have done that each and every time in the five previous trips and even though some of you are sitting this one out, a lot of fans will be looking to escape winter in Iowa for sunny Clearwater Beach.
The fact is the Outback Bowl and Tampa is a great fit for Iowa fans. They have treated everyone warmly on every trip and I haven’t found anyone who said they didn’t enjoy the visit to the area for the bowl game. I’m looking forward to trip #6 to Tampa later this month.
It’s been a pretty busy week when it comes to Hawkeye news, so let’s get to what we learned this week.
1. I’ll start this week with a general observation about college football. While I love the fact that we have a four team playoff system, I think we are heading towards playoff expansion in the future.
I know the season in many ways serves as a playoff system that eliminates teams each and every week, but if you are going to have a real playoff, then it has to include more of the conference champions. This year, once again, the Big Ten was left on the sidelines. The Pac-12 also left out, again.
The solution is very simple, expand the College Football Playoff to eight teams. Take the conference champion from all five major conference, a non-AQ team, like UCF this year, and then have the selection committee pick two wild cards. Figure out the match-ups among those eight and either play them in on campus locations, domes in the colder climates, or neutral sites.
One thing I know is there’s a lot of money to be made creating an eight team playoff and the one thing we know about the folks that make these decisions, they are motivated by making bank.
2. On Sunday afternoon we met with Kirk Ferentz to discuss the Outback Bowl, but the biggest news item was the fact that he met with several players who are draft eligible about their potential opportunities in the NFL. Of the players that we spoke to on Sunday, Amani Hooker, Nate Stanley, and T.J. Hockenson said they had met with Ferentz about getting more information from NFL teams.
Personally, I like this approach from Ferentz. A lot of coaches would become selfish in a situation like this and try to keep the players for another year and discourage leaving early for the NFL.
Ferentz is just the opposite. While he’s not going to push his players out the door, he’s going to help guide them to a sensible decision. He did that last year with James Daniels. When we spoke to Daniels last year, he freely admitted he wasn’t thinking too hard about the NFL and was probably going to come back. It was Ferentz that called him in and told the Iowa center he was getting a lot of interest and should get more feedback. Now he’s starting at guard for the Bears in the NFL.
3. We will get to the other players in a minute, but perhaps the biggest news (and least shocking) of the week was Noah Fant not just declaring for the NFL, but deciding not to play in Iowa’s bowl game.
Fant is projected by most NFL evaluators to be the top tight end in the 2019 NFL Draft, so it was pretty much a given that he was leaving Iowa. What we didn’t know is that he was considering leaving before the bowl game.
It makes sense on several levels. First, NFL teams haven’t “punished” players who opted out of a bowl game. The players who have left are basically picked in the same spot they would have been had they played in a bowl game. Second, it’s an injury risk that’s not worth taking to play one more game. In some sense it’s playing with fire. You could end up like Michigan tight end Jake Butt, who was set to be a pretty high pick in the draft and then he got hurt in a meaningless bowl game. Lastly, even if you don’t get hurt, it’s another game and instead you can work on training to crush it at the NFL Combine. Fant has always tested very well and he has a chance to really add to his bank account in February.
The average career for an NFL player is just over three years. Basically it means your earning potential in the game of football is likely going to be limited, so strike while the iron is hot and that’s what Fant is going to do. Also, in talking to his teammates, none seemed even remotely angered by the decisions.
4. Now on to the other guys and their decisions. I’m guessing that Anthony Nelson was also included in the small group discussions with Kirk Ferentz, so we are looking at four players on the current Iowa roster.
My feeling is if you get a first or second round grade from an NFL team, you should leave school and head to the professional ranks. Last year, the final pick in the first round of the NFL Draft was Lamar Jackson and he signed a four year deal worth 9.5 million dollars, including a $5 million signing bonus. The final pick in the second round received a four year deal with $4.4 million and a signing bonus of $1.25 million.
You can’t turn that down coming out of college. The average college student wouldn’t turn down that kind of money at the end of their third year.
I think the only Iowa player out of that group that will have a decision to make is Hockenson. The rest of them probably don’t get a second round or above grade. If he gets the first or second round grade, then he would be foolish not to take the money and head off to the NFL.
5. Speaking of Hockenson, his rise up the tight end ranks has been pretty remarkable. I remember the first time I actually saw Hockenson. It was actually on the basketball court at an AAU tournament in the Des Moines area. I had actually gone to the event to see Jordan Bohannon and Ryan Kriener play for the Martin Brothers team and saw the floppy haired Hockenson on a court nearby. His hair kind of made his stick out like a sore thumb and his play got me even more interested.
That day I was impressed with his athletic ability and wondered if Iowa would eventually offer him a scholarship to play football. He kind of reminded me of Brandon Myers, who was a really good basketball player in high school, but had a higher ceiling playing football.
Fast forward to today, just two years after his redshirt year and he’s now probably the odds on favorite to win the Mackey Award, which goes annually to the top tight end in college football. On Sunday we were joking with him that if he wins that award that there’s nothing left for him to achieve as far as an individual award. He smiled and laughed and then I mentioned winning the Heisman Trophy and he laughed again.
6. I’ll be writing more about Iowa’s bowl opponent, Mississippi State, this week. They are one of the top defensive teams in the country this year, allowing an NCAA best 12 points per game. Offensively, they have their challenges, which is interesting because head coach Joe Moorehead was brought in to fix that side of the ball. It hasn’t happened as they expected, but their defense is really good, especially up front.
What I want to warn everyone about is cowbells, because you are going to hear a lot of them over and over again on January 1st.
Mississippi State fans bring cowbells to the game and then bang those suckers all through the game. If you thought Tennessee fans like to sing “Rocky Top”, wait till you hear the clang of the cowbell over and over again.
Be prepared and if you are coming to Tampa, bring earplugs.
7. One last football note and this goes out to Bill Snyder, arguably the greatest college football coach ever, who officially retired on Sunday. There will be no third act for Snyder as the Wildcats head coach. He retired once and it didn’t hold, but this time at age 79, he is officially retiring his old windbreaker.
Snyder came to Iowa City with Hayden Fry in 1979 to try to do the impossible, build Iowa football into a winning program. Perhaps it was what Fry did that inspired Snyder to bet on himself in 1989 and accept the head coaching job at Kansas State. If you thought Iowa was in a football slump, Kansas State was in a century long slump. There are coaching graveyards and then there’s the Little Apple, where no one had even moderate success, ever.
He signed a five year deal with an $85,000 salary and went to work.
By his third year, he led the Wildcats to a 7-4 season. By his fifth season, in 1993, Snyder led KSU to nine wins and bowl game. That started a string of 11 straight bowl appearances, four Big 12 West titles (or sharing of titles) and unprecedented success for the Wildcat program.
He retired after the 2005 season, but it didn’t hold. The program had started to slip and he was back at the helm in in 2009. By 2012, he once again was at the top of the Big 12.
A hearty tip of the cap to Bill Snyder on a great coaching career.
We discuss Noah Fant's decision and the other potential NFL Hawkeyes.
Tom Kakert • HawkeyeReport.com
@hawkeyereport
I know the prevailing opinion of many Iowa fans is been there, done that when it comes to another trip to Tampa and the Outback Bowl.
I get it. I really do.
Having made five previous trips to the Outback Bowl, I think I’ve spent at least a month in the media hotel on Westshore Drive, so I get that some folks want something new and different.
I get that Hawkeye fans on the west coast feel left out once again with visions of the Holiday Bowl dancing in their heads. I think we all thought this would be the year that Iowa and the City of San Diego would meet once again, but it was not to be.
The fact is the Iowa option was the best one for the Outback Bowl this year. Bowls are about one thing over everything else and that’s delivering an audience in the stadium and Iowa fans have done that each and every time in the five previous trips and even though some of you are sitting this one out, a lot of fans will be looking to escape winter in Iowa for sunny Clearwater Beach.
The fact is the Outback Bowl and Tampa is a great fit for Iowa fans. They have treated everyone warmly on every trip and I haven’t found anyone who said they didn’t enjoy the visit to the area for the bowl game. I’m looking forward to trip #6 to Tampa later this month.
It’s been a pretty busy week when it comes to Hawkeye news, so let’s get to what we learned this week.
1. I’ll start this week with a general observation about college football. While I love the fact that we have a four team playoff system, I think we are heading towards playoff expansion in the future.
I know the season in many ways serves as a playoff system that eliminates teams each and every week, but if you are going to have a real playoff, then it has to include more of the conference champions. This year, once again, the Big Ten was left on the sidelines. The Pac-12 also left out, again.
The solution is very simple, expand the College Football Playoff to eight teams. Take the conference champion from all five major conference, a non-AQ team, like UCF this year, and then have the selection committee pick two wild cards. Figure out the match-ups among those eight and either play them in on campus locations, domes in the colder climates, or neutral sites.
One thing I know is there’s a lot of money to be made creating an eight team playoff and the one thing we know about the folks that make these decisions, they are motivated by making bank.
2. On Sunday afternoon we met with Kirk Ferentz to discuss the Outback Bowl, but the biggest news item was the fact that he met with several players who are draft eligible about their potential opportunities in the NFL. Of the players that we spoke to on Sunday, Amani Hooker, Nate Stanley, and T.J. Hockenson said they had met with Ferentz about getting more information from NFL teams.
Personally, I like this approach from Ferentz. A lot of coaches would become selfish in a situation like this and try to keep the players for another year and discourage leaving early for the NFL.
Ferentz is just the opposite. While he’s not going to push his players out the door, he’s going to help guide them to a sensible decision. He did that last year with James Daniels. When we spoke to Daniels last year, he freely admitted he wasn’t thinking too hard about the NFL and was probably going to come back. It was Ferentz that called him in and told the Iowa center he was getting a lot of interest and should get more feedback. Now he’s starting at guard for the Bears in the NFL.
3. We will get to the other players in a minute, but perhaps the biggest news (and least shocking) of the week was Noah Fant not just declaring for the NFL, but deciding not to play in Iowa’s bowl game.
Fant is projected by most NFL evaluators to be the top tight end in the 2019 NFL Draft, so it was pretty much a given that he was leaving Iowa. What we didn’t know is that he was considering leaving before the bowl game.
It makes sense on several levels. First, NFL teams haven’t “punished” players who opted out of a bowl game. The players who have left are basically picked in the same spot they would have been had they played in a bowl game. Second, it’s an injury risk that’s not worth taking to play one more game. In some sense it’s playing with fire. You could end up like Michigan tight end Jake Butt, who was set to be a pretty high pick in the draft and then he got hurt in a meaningless bowl game. Lastly, even if you don’t get hurt, it’s another game and instead you can work on training to crush it at the NFL Combine. Fant has always tested very well and he has a chance to really add to his bank account in February.
The average career for an NFL player is just over three years. Basically it means your earning potential in the game of football is likely going to be limited, so strike while the iron is hot and that’s what Fant is going to do. Also, in talking to his teammates, none seemed even remotely angered by the decisions.
4. Now on to the other guys and their decisions. I’m guessing that Anthony Nelson was also included in the small group discussions with Kirk Ferentz, so we are looking at four players on the current Iowa roster.
My feeling is if you get a first or second round grade from an NFL team, you should leave school and head to the professional ranks. Last year, the final pick in the first round of the NFL Draft was Lamar Jackson and he signed a four year deal worth 9.5 million dollars, including a $5 million signing bonus. The final pick in the second round received a four year deal with $4.4 million and a signing bonus of $1.25 million.
You can’t turn that down coming out of college. The average college student wouldn’t turn down that kind of money at the end of their third year.
I think the only Iowa player out of that group that will have a decision to make is Hockenson. The rest of them probably don’t get a second round or above grade. If he gets the first or second round grade, then he would be foolish not to take the money and head off to the NFL.
5. Speaking of Hockenson, his rise up the tight end ranks has been pretty remarkable. I remember the first time I actually saw Hockenson. It was actually on the basketball court at an AAU tournament in the Des Moines area. I had actually gone to the event to see Jordan Bohannon and Ryan Kriener play for the Martin Brothers team and saw the floppy haired Hockenson on a court nearby. His hair kind of made his stick out like a sore thumb and his play got me even more interested.
That day I was impressed with his athletic ability and wondered if Iowa would eventually offer him a scholarship to play football. He kind of reminded me of Brandon Myers, who was a really good basketball player in high school, but had a higher ceiling playing football.
Fast forward to today, just two years after his redshirt year and he’s now probably the odds on favorite to win the Mackey Award, which goes annually to the top tight end in college football. On Sunday we were joking with him that if he wins that award that there’s nothing left for him to achieve as far as an individual award. He smiled and laughed and then I mentioned winning the Heisman Trophy and he laughed again.
6. I’ll be writing more about Iowa’s bowl opponent, Mississippi State, this week. They are one of the top defensive teams in the country this year, allowing an NCAA best 12 points per game. Offensively, they have their challenges, which is interesting because head coach Joe Moorehead was brought in to fix that side of the ball. It hasn’t happened as they expected, but their defense is really good, especially up front.
What I want to warn everyone about is cowbells, because you are going to hear a lot of them over and over again on January 1st.
Mississippi State fans bring cowbells to the game and then bang those suckers all through the game. If you thought Tennessee fans like to sing “Rocky Top”, wait till you hear the clang of the cowbell over and over again.
Be prepared and if you are coming to Tampa, bring earplugs.
7. One last football note and this goes out to Bill Snyder, arguably the greatest college football coach ever, who officially retired on Sunday. There will be no third act for Snyder as the Wildcats head coach. He retired once and it didn’t hold, but this time at age 79, he is officially retiring his old windbreaker.
Snyder came to Iowa City with Hayden Fry in 1979 to try to do the impossible, build Iowa football into a winning program. Perhaps it was what Fry did that inspired Snyder to bet on himself in 1989 and accept the head coaching job at Kansas State. If you thought Iowa was in a football slump, Kansas State was in a century long slump. There are coaching graveyards and then there’s the Little Apple, where no one had even moderate success, ever.
He signed a five year deal with an $85,000 salary and went to work.
By his third year, he led the Wildcats to a 7-4 season. By his fifth season, in 1993, Snyder led KSU to nine wins and bowl game. That started a string of 11 straight bowl appearances, four Big 12 West titles (or sharing of titles) and unprecedented success for the Wildcat program.
He retired after the 2005 season, but it didn’t hold. The program had started to slip and he was back at the helm in in 2009. By 2012, he once again was at the top of the Big 12.
A hearty tip of the cap to Bill Snyder on a great coaching career.
