“I don’t know what it would take to get me out of here. The NFL? If you pinned me down, maybe the NFL when I’m 58. If you get your butt shot off when you’re 58, who cares? You’ll be 60 soon. I’m not going to worry about it then. I know this: Players last an average of 3.3 years in the NFL, and head coaches are probably under that.” -Kirk Ferentz, 2002

I remember Ferentz speaking those words back in 2002. He was in his fourth year at Iowa at the time, and the Hawkeyes were coming off a bowl win in 2001 and had just navigated the Big Ten at 8-0 and were getting ready to play in the Orange Bowl. Ferentz hasn’t come anywhere near this quote since then with regards to offering up specifics about his future, only to say ‘you never say never, but I really like it here’ about 100 times.

Late last week, Ferentz signed a contract extension that will have him as Iowa’s head coach through the 2020 season. Ferentz, now 55, would be 65 years old when that deal expires. Come say, 2016, Iowa may have to get creative and begin either a public succession plan so that recruiting isn’t damaged or Ferentz re-ups for more years. I think the former is much more likely than the latter and Ferentz will ride off into the Hawkeye sunset much like his predecessor Hayden Fry did back in late 1998 when he uttered these words through many tears and emotions:

“From a timing standpoint … selfishly this is not the right time for me. I would rather have gone out with a real good season and all that good stuff coaches like to talk about. I truly love the University of Iowa and I truly love the state of Iowa … I’ll always be a Hawk. That’s why I decided to go ahead and retire now. I still got some years left in me and I am still a mean old son of a gun.”

Fry was 69 years old when he uttered those words and stepped away from his legendary position. He had just served 20 years as the Head Hawk, the man who brought Iowa football back to the national spotlight after it had languished for 19 straight seasons without a winning record.

To people like me, he was more than just the Iowa coach; he was nearly a mythic figure, larger than life, iconic with his sunglasses and black Iowa windbreaker. I only just met him for the first time last year as I emceed the media panel portion of Fry Fest where Hayden took part.

I had previous opportunities to meet the man but always passed on them because I didn’t want the man to not live up to the mythical status he held for me through the eye of a child’s mind. Needless to say, Hayden in the flesh lived up to what I remembered him to be from my youth…and then some. Many of you that are my age or older are probably nodding your head right now in agreement with regards to the special place Hayden has in your memories.

While driving home from that event last year, I began to think about the people currently aged 10-25…those that are 25 were 13 years of age when Kirk Ferentz took over. I was 13 in 1984, about the time Iowa was rolling Texas in the Freedom Bowl and just three years removed from Iowa’s first bowl game in nearly a quarter century. I began to think about the impact Kirk Ferentz has had in their lives as sports fans, as Iowa fans. I came to the conclusion that what Fry meant to me, Ferentz means to them.

Then again, Ferentz means a lot to me, too.

While some of my peers in the media may cringe when they read me write something like this, I have never held to traditional norms or practices as it has related to sharing my thoughts on Iowa Hawkeye athletics. I didn’t get into this line of work to adorn my walls with broadcasting or writing awards. Not that there is anything wrong with that sort of tribute or career path, but I got into this because I love the Iowa Hawkeyes and I have always wanted to talk about them for my career. Back in 1984, when I was 13, when some of my friends were still dreaming of being in the NFL or NBA, I told my dad that I wanted to be the voice of the Hawkeyes one day. 16 years later, the Internet came along for me in a big way and I found an outlet to pursue those childhood dreams, along with a degree in Radio & Television broadcasting I had earned six years prior.

There will be times when I am critical because a situation may call for it, such as this past March when I said I could no longer support Todd Lickliter as Iowa’s head coach. However, those times have been few and far between, thankfully, mostly because Kirk Ferentz has been a constant common denominator.

There were no guarantees that Iowa was going to have a great transition from Fry to his successor, or that the next coach was going to return the program to the glory days under Fry. However, Ferentz has done that and I will be eternally grateful to him for building such a strong and classy program.

Had he not done that, had the Hawkeyes continued to slide off the national scene, there is a real strong possibility that HawkeyeNation.com would not have enjoyed the success it has had. That means radio hosts wouldn’t have been calling me for my opinions, which wouldn’t have exposed the site to tens of thousands of Iowa fans across the state, or program directors at 1040 WHO radio or the Big Ten Network.

So as we got closer and closer to Kirk Ferentz’s 58th birthday, his quote from 2002 would pop into my head a few times each year and I would think, “what’s next?”

We’ve seen how coaching changes upset the success at Nebraska and Michigan, two programs that have a national name and national championship lineage and too many resources at their disposal to remain down for too long. One bad coaching hire at Iowa can mean a decade of stagnation. Look no further than the Iowa men’s basketball program for your evidence.

Life without Ferentz as Iowa’s head coach? I haven’t wanted to contemplate that.

Now, thanks to Ferentz’s love for Iowa, his desire to remain at his job and Iowa’s commitment to him, he has a contract through 2020. He’ll be four years younger then than Fry was when he stepped down. He will have coached at Iowa for 22 seasons, two more than Fry. Iowa will have had two head coaches in a 42 year span, something no other program in the nation will be able to say other than perhaps Penn State or Florida State.

Fry posted 143 wins in those 20 years, Ferentz has 82 in 11 years plus Saturday’s game, nearly an identical pace to Fry’s. To surpass Fry, he’ll need average about six wins a year through the 2020 season. Fry led Iowa to 14 bowl games, Ferentz has eight to his credit. Four of Ferentz’s teams have finished a season ranked in the Top 10, more than Fry.

He’d never embrace this thought or at least not now, but Kirk Ferentz is a living Hawkeye legend and shows no signs of slowing. The football program has the ball rolling right now better than it has in my lifetime.

Factor in on field performance (21-6 over the past two years and one game this year, with all six losses coming by a touchdown or less), recruiting success (each of the past two classes have been more than half full of verbals before September, meaning Iowa is getting many of the kids it has targeted early), financial strength of the program (16th highest revenue producing program in the nation), on field success (the 12th highest winning percentage of any team in a BCS conference the past eight seasons) and stability within the assistant ranks (The average years of service for the 10 position and strength and conditioning coaches that report directly to Ferentz is 10 years).

The Hawkeyes are a-rollin’ & showin’ no signs of slowin’.

They have arguably the best football coach in America leading the program and that’s not even Ferentz’s best quality. The philanthropic work that he and his wife Mary perform throughout the state doesn’t get enough light shed on it, but that’s by design; the Ferentz’s are very humble and do good works in private, not on street corners. That’s how it’s supposed to be. His players follow his lead and spend a lot of their free time at the Iowa Children’s Hopsital, brightening the days of families who are dealing with things far more daunting than an Ohio State defense.

These are the things that remind us why we feel the pride in being Iowans…when your leaders are your biggest servants, people tend to follow in kind.

Good thing for us we get to follow Kirk’s lead for another decade.

I wrote Kirk a note early on in his tenure, saying that I was impressed that he was the same person at press conferences when his team was 11-1 as he was when they were 1-11. I was all of 31 years at the time, but I could tell I was around a special leader of men. I told him that I hoped to be there covering his retirement press conference no sooner than 20 years hence.

He wrote me back saying that he too hoped to be at Iowa that long and to see me there when that day came.

It won’t be an easy day for Iowa fans, nor will it be an easy day for me, given how much respect I have for him. However, that day won’t be coming for a good long while now and I believe only better days are ahead for his Iowa football program and its fans.

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ADDITION: I want to add the following to this item. It comes from our message boards from user BSpringsteen…probably not the ‘real’ boss, but his sentiments are in line with the piece with some important additions.

Jon – great piece.

When KF retires at Iowa this will be the legacy of Iowa football.

• Two coaches in no less than 42 years.
• Successive record setting victory attaining coaches
• A commitment to making the Iowa football coach the highest paid or just about in the conference.
• A commitment to facilities.
• A commitment to assistants that is almost unprecedented.

My point is, that Ferentz legacy is going to be untouchable. He won’t have his own coaching tree like Fry but his impact on Iowa will be greater. He will leave Iowa in a better position than it has ever been.

He is a coach who has never made the same mistake twice in his career. This means we are unlikely to see a repeat of 2006, or the off the field transgressions. Why would anyone leave Iowa. You get a handsome payday and if you win 9 games a year and your kids keep their noses clean, you’re doing just fine.

Iowa is a special place to its alums and they realize that this is not a place that people leave. They settle down in Iowa, and it gets in your blood. I’m not from Iowa, and I don’t live there now. I was in Iowa City for 4.5 years. And there isn’t a place that will make the hair on my neck stand up more than Kinnick Stadium on a fall Saturday.

Ferentz isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but I do believe that this contract will be his last. There is not a better ambassador to the world for my alma mater.

Tags: hawkeye football, Hawkeye Nation, hawkeyenation.com, Iowa football, Kirk Ferentz