THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Blog long enough–and I’m going on four years–and you inevitably see almost everything good and bad about the Internet. As I’ve been trying to follow the Iowa State coaching search over the last couple days I have unfortunately been drug into one of the Internet’s seedier backwaters: the college football message board.

Full disclosure: I used to post (very occasionally) on Iowa’s Rivals.com site. I stopped posting and reading when it became clear that to be a “real” Hawkeye fan, you had to expect Iowa to be in the BCS every year. Not gonna happen. By that I mean (a) I’ll never think that nor use that as my standard for judging Iowa’s success, and (b) it’ll never happen that Iowa gets to the BCS every year–or even, on average, more than about one year out of every four.

A quick perusal of the Iowa boards last night found a significant clot of posters who were actually hoping for Kirk Ferentz to leave the university. This is the one of the most unheard-of things I’ve ever heard of. I’m as disappointed as anyone with Iowa’s 6-6 regular season, but statistically, these sort of aberrations have been part of Iowa football since the dawn of the Hayden Fry era.

Hey, go take a look at Hayden’s coaching record. Don’t become so blinded by Fry’s eight consecutive winning seasons that you fail to miss the following points:

• The ‘typical’ Hayden Fry season was somewhere around 8-4.
• Only twice (1985 and 1991) did Fry’s teams finish with fewer than three losses on the year.
• Kirk Ferentz has already matched that performance. (2002, 2004)
• Remember those three consecutive non-winning seasons (1991-1993)?

None of this is to say that Ferentz and his staff are above criticism. This is one Hawkeye fan’s take on what has happened and why.

• Iowa has never recovered from key defensive losses. I’m not talking about Chad Greenway and Abdul Hodge, though they are missed. The two players Iowa has not satisfactorily replaced are Matt Roth and Bob Sanders. Roth was the last truly credible Hawkeye pass rusher–and the meanest Hawk since Alex Karras. No disrepect intended to the Hawks who have followed Roth, but they just don’t seem to have the same aggressiveness. Bob Sanders–have you forgotten how well he kept the middle of the field bottled up? Have you forgotten what a terror he was to pass-catching running backs and tight ends? Now ask yourself what Iowa’s key defensive weaknesses have been this season? How about “the lack of a credible pass rush” and “the persistent inability to cover the underneath and crossing routes”?
• Turnover margin. In the Big Ten, only Illinois’ is worse. Maybe that’s related to . . .
• An offense that’s trying too hard. How hurt was Drew Tate throughout the season, and who got in his head and told him the team simply couldn’t win without a Herculean effort on his part?
• The harsh realities of life for Iowa in the Big Ten. Iowa’s population is just a hair over 2.9 million. The next smallest population in the conference is Minnesota’s, with slightly more than 5 million. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania each have more than ten million people, making them three to four times more populous than Iowa. The Hawkeyes share the state with another BCS-conference team, something that doesn’t happen in Minnesota or Wisconsin, and barely happens in Ohio and Pennsylvania. This forces the Hawkeyes to gamble on some players who maybe aren’t quite up to the same level as the recruits at other Big Ten schools. Sometimes this works (see “Greenway, Chad”) but sometimes it doesn’t. This year it didn’t, as only Dominique Douglas emerged from obscurity and seemed to get a lot better as the season went along. And do not forget how many JC transfers have historically helped the Hawkeye cause. Even Brad Banks played juco ball, and how many states have a higher level of juco football than Iowa?

So maybe it gets better next season and maybe it doesn’t. At least this year we probably won’t have to endure all those “Ferentz to the NFL” rumors over the holidays. My sole point is that these sorts of seasons are common for Iowa historically, and it’s not like Kirk Ferentz suddenly forgot how to coach football. If you want an 11-1 season every year, start lobbying for Iowa to drop down to the MAC, because not even Hayden Fry could keep Iowa permanently above the three-losses-per-season barrier.