‘Scandal unfolding in plain sight’: A bad coach, an ‘insane’ contract and why he’ll never be sacked (2023)

The bizarre new contract handed to Iowa offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz has shone a spotlight on perhaps the strangest - and worst - coaching situation in college football.

After all, it should be very simple.

In the last three seasons, he has received numerous claims of player mistreatment (and apologised for it), and then led a terrible offence in consecutive years that completely wasted the team’s championship-level defence.

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Any other school, he would have been fired by now.

But Brian Ferentz has not been fired. Because the head coach at Iowa is Kirk Ferentz. His father.

Instead, the school’s strange, long-running saga took another turn on Tuesday when Brian Ferentz (all ensuing references to Ferentz are to him) saw his contract amended.

Ferentz, now contracted through the middle of 2024, will automatically have his deal extended if he meets several metrics: 25 points per game and seven wins (in a potential 14-game season). Meet those and he’ll get a nice $US112,500 bonus, too.

So how difficult are those?

Well, Iowa has won seven games in every full-length season except one since 2007. And 85 teams averaged 25-plus points per game last season. (Also, Iowa has a much easier schedule in 2023 because they don’t play in-conference powerhouses Michigan or Ohio State.)

Iowa, admittedly, only scored 18.6 points per game last season. But that’s because Ferentz was in charge. And if he can’t clear these absurdly low bars (which include defensive and special team scores, for some reason), he certainly doesn’t deserve a contract extension and bonus.

Some analysts have also pointed out that 25 points per game should be easier to achieve at Iowa than at most schools, because the incredible defence generally sets them up on shorter fields. (Though clearly Ferentz has not taken advantage of this in recent seasons.)

So how on earth did we get here?

Well, complaints have been growing for some time about his stewardship - in the same way that complaints grew about Edward Smith’s stewardship of the Titanic at some point after hitting the iceberg.

Iowa had an absolutely incredible defence in 2022; according to ESPN’s respected SP+ metric, the best in the entire country - even better than national champions Georgia, who it feels like have 11 future first-round picks running around each year. Oh, and they had the fifth-best special teams, to boot.

Surely the best defence in America would get you pretty far, right? Well, they only went 8-5 last season.

And that’s because Ferentz’s offence was a simply horrendous 118th out of 131 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). The teams worse than them were either absolute minnows or blubbering messes in the midst of much-needed rebuilds - not a well-known and respected school that contends yearly for a spot in its conference championship game.

They averaged 251.6 yards per game, 130st in the country and the lowest for a Big Ten conference team this century.

The horrendous 2022 campaign followed the Hawkeyes ranking a lowly 94th in 2021 (the defence ranking 5th), while in the shortened 2020 season they were merely a mediocre 45th.

But the concerns around Ferentz aren’t purely surrounding his coaching ability. In 2020, he was cited in complaints by multiple former players, when Iowa dealt with a racial reckoning of sorts.

More than three dozen ex-Hawkeyes came forward, accusing the program - located in one of the most predominantly white states in the US - of poor treatment of non-white players.

Former running back Akrum Wadley alleged after putting on a wool hat, while jogging Ferentz asked him “Hey Akrum, are you going to rob a gas station?” and later “Akrum are you going to rob a liquor store?”

Another ex-running back, Johnathan Parker, claimed: “There was a play when I was on when I attempted to do my job and because I didn’t do it up to the coach Brian Ferentz’ liking.

“He began yelling and screaming at me, kicked the garbage can and said to me in front of all the coaches ‘only a dumb a** Black player would do it like that’.”

Officially, a law firm found the Iowa program “fostered an unwelcoming environment for young black men”, per The Athletic, and Ferentz said: “for any player to have a negative experience in our program, for any player to not feel valued or respected at a human level, I’m deeply sorry.”

Then there was how he was hired in the first place.

The University of Iowa has rules around nepotism - understandably, because a situation like this one can easily develop - except they’re not exactly watertight.

When Ferentz was elevated from offensive line coach to offensive coordinator in 2012, it was claimed his father did not hire him (even though at 99.9 per cent of schools, the head coach would at least have a say in hiring an offensive coordinator).

Instead Iowa athletic director Gary Barta officially said he hired Ferentz, and that Ferentz reports directly to him - a man who has a much more wide-ranging job than evaluating the football team’s offensive play-caller - and that Barta conducts his performance reviews.

“It’s clear that all the university’s policies were followed, which makes us confident everything has proceeded as is supposed to,” university spokesman Tom Moore said at the time.

If we’re not getting this across: This is utterly absurd. But, because of his dad’s power at the school - where he is their winningest coach - it was ticked off.

“But I think we’ve got the right guys,” Ferentz’s father said last week when discussing the team’s recent issues.

“I guess that’s what I’m saying, whether it’s players or coaches. Eager to get to work.”

And that unfortunately reflects the sad reality of the situation. A chorus of discord is growing in the college football media - and even around Iowa, where Ferentz’s father is revered and helps spur a culture where negative questions can result in a lack of access for reporters.

Yet Ferentz will not be fired unless he absolutely, positively, no question has to be. The contract extension discussed earlier will not trigger if he does not meet those incredibly basic goals - but even then, if the Hawkeyes are again absolutely woeful with Ferentz in charge, it’s not that hard to imagine his father trying to work something out to save him.

College football writer and podcaster Alex Kirshner put it best in response to the latest twist in the Ferentz tale.

“This is just an insane situation. Iowa football doesn’t belong to Iowa anymore. It’s a family small business,” he tweeted.

“Iowa can’t fire Kirk for cause because he’s just doing what his athletic director allows him to do. Barta continuing to be allowed to do this is just absurd, though.

“This is a scandal unfolding in plain sight. I think everyone’s appropriately mad about it except for the three or four people who might do something about it.

“A Big Ten football program at a public school is being allowed to wilt because a dad won’t make his son earn a job.”