This season has been special to the first family of Iowa football, and it could have been much different.
By Danny Payne
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LOS ANGELES — Stanford head coach David Shaw experienced it, Brian Ferentz has as well. Had Hawkeye Athletics Director Gary Barta pulled the plug on Kirk Ferentz’s career as head coach at Iowa after last season’s loss in the TaxSlayer Bowl, perhaps the Ferentzes would have to experience a relocation, again.
In college football’s current “win now or you’re out” stage, maybe the 17-year head coach wouldn’t have received another chance under a different administration and would have packed his bags to move to the next job.
The effect a job change, whether it’s voluntary or involuntary, has on a head coach’s family is often understated and something some of the most prominent figures in the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl have experienced.
“I’m talking as a coach’s kid who has been through a lot,” said Shaw, whose father, Willie, coached for the Vikings and Chiefs, among other stops in the NFL and NCAA. “I’ve packed my boxes at 7 years old in my room because we had to move because everybody got fired because we had one bad year, all those things. I’ve been through that.”
He shares that experience with Brian Ferentz, Iowa’s offensive-line coach and running-game coordinator. Brian, Kirk Ferentz’s oldest child, moved all over the map after he was born in Iowa City during his father’s first stint as a Hawkeye aide. He went to Maine, Cleveland, and Baltimore before returning to Iowa City.
While he said he wouldn’t trade his summers at NFL training camps for anything — he got to watch the likes of Bill Belichick, Ken Whisenhunt, and Nick Saban coach, along with such players as Jonathan Ogden and Orlando Brown, who called him “Little Kirk” — the lifestyle still had its cons.
The Ferentzs moved several times before heading back to Iowa City. He said the constant relocating made it tough to make friends and other things similar to that, while his younger brothers, James and Steve (a junior lineman for the Hawkeyes), had the benefit of growing up in the Iowa City school system for the majority of their lives.
“It’s the hardest part of growing up in a coaching family,” Brian Ferentz said. “And that’s certainly something I worry about with my children, what kind of life I’ll be able to provide for them.”
Perhaps he’ll be able to provide the type of stability for his two young children he received, or perhaps his coaching career will take him a different direction. Maybe he’ll be Iowa’s next head coach and be in Iowa City for 17 seasons, or maybe he’ll go elsewhere and have a long, fruitful career, just like his father.
While that may be tough to wrap your head around, what’s even crazier to think about is that Kirk Ferentz wasn’t fired after last season.
Especially because of the culture in the game, it’d be tough to find someone who didn’t want to show him the door. Iowa could have gone through a change and perhaps a few down years, but it didn’t. The Hawkeyes stayed the course.
“[Last year,] I said was the foundation is really strong,” Barta said Wednesday. “And I believed it; I meant it.”
It’s a good thing he did mean it. There would be no Rose Bowl, the Ferentz family would be on the move, perhaps coaching elsewhere or maybe even sitting in a television studio this week analyzing bowl games.
That’s just one part of what makes the 2015 season so special — this is a family affair for the first family of football in Iowa. Had the same situation taken place somewhere else, this season likely would have never happened.
“Our family is pretty fortunate in 1999 at a place where longevity is valued,” Steve Ferentz said. “…We were given a chance and turned it around. It’s been a good 17, 18 years.
“[It’s gratifying], but it’s not a spiteful gratifying. It’s more of me being happy for him, my brother, our family. It’s been nice.”
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