Maintaining Perspective on Hawkeye Football
With spring practice now completed, I can now begin the weekly ritual of informing my wife of how many weeks remain until the Hawks open the 2010 football season. Her indifference to my anticipation and excitement is troubling, but we remain married anyway.
It would be difficult to find many Hawk fans who aren’t excited about the upcoming season and aren’t still pumped about the last two seasons that produced many thrilling moments and two impressive January bowl victories. But, it wasn’t all that long ago that many fans were questioning Coach Ferentz and the state of Hawkeye football when victories were harder to come by during the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Looking ahead to 2011, we all know the Hawks will have some big holes to fill, and it will be interesting to see how the fan base will react if the victories become less frequent and the program struggles a bit while it makes that inevitable transition to a new core group of leaders and players. If it does struggle, I hope fans will leverage off of a more recent historical perspective of Hawkeye football and not get swept up in the analytically challenged hyperbole that we sometimes hear from disgruntled and frustrated fans, who cling to the generalization that losing is always the byproduct of bad coaching, even when your coach is a proven winner.
I’m a great admirer of Hayden Fry and the job he did at Iowa. Going to 14 bowl games in 20 years was not a trivial accomplishment for a football program that had been mired in two decades of losing prior to his arrival. I was a student at Iowa in 1979 when Hayden became head coach and got to witness the remarkable resurgence of program that had been often referred to as a “coaching graveyard.”
As good as Hayden was, however, he couldn’t sustain a high level success for his entire tenure at Iowa. The program really seemed to hit the wall in the early nineties and struggled to a 16-18-1 record between 1992 and 1994. Injuries, less talent, and the cumulative effect of losing assistant coaches like Snyder, Alvarez, McCarney, and Ferentz had taken its toll on a program that had very little margin for error. There was a nice resurgence in 1995 and 1996 with 8 and 9 wins respectively, including two impressive bowl victories, a decent but disappointing 7 win season in 1997, and then the 3 win debacle in 1998.
The cyclical pattern that we saw in Hayden’s last few years seems to parallel what we have also seen in the Ferentz era and will likely continue to see in 2010 and beyond:
Great or very good seasons juxtaposed against seasons with more losses and mediocrity.
And why does this cyclical pattern exist? Does it exist because of bad coaching, or does it exist because there are things that happen that not even the best coaching can solve? Does it exist because there are inherent obstacles in sustaining a high level of success at institutions that simply cannot recruit the best athletes year in and year out?
The cyclical extremes of Iowa football seem to be our reality regardless of who the coach is. I’m not saying we have to like it, but I do believe it is the fate that the football Gods have bestowed upon us. For now, however, we seem to be at the apex of the current cycle. Let’s enjoy the successes that we anticipate the 2010 season will bring. Go Hawks!
It would be difficult to find many Hawk fans who aren’t excited about the upcoming season and aren’t still pumped about the last two seasons that produced many thrilling moments and two impressive January bowl victories. But, it wasn’t all that long ago that many fans were questioning Coach Ferentz and the state of Hawkeye football when victories were harder to come by during the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Looking ahead to 2011, we all know the Hawks will have some big holes to fill, and it will be interesting to see how the fan base will react if the victories become less frequent and the program struggles a bit while it makes that inevitable transition to a new core group of leaders and players. If it does struggle, I hope fans will leverage off of a more recent historical perspective of Hawkeye football and not get swept up in the analytically challenged hyperbole that we sometimes hear from disgruntled and frustrated fans, who cling to the generalization that losing is always the byproduct of bad coaching, even when your coach is a proven winner.
I’m a great admirer of Hayden Fry and the job he did at Iowa. Going to 14 bowl games in 20 years was not a trivial accomplishment for a football program that had been mired in two decades of losing prior to his arrival. I was a student at Iowa in 1979 when Hayden became head coach and got to witness the remarkable resurgence of program that had been often referred to as a “coaching graveyard.”
As good as Hayden was, however, he couldn’t sustain a high level success for his entire tenure at Iowa. The program really seemed to hit the wall in the early nineties and struggled to a 16-18-1 record between 1992 and 1994. Injuries, less talent, and the cumulative effect of losing assistant coaches like Snyder, Alvarez, McCarney, and Ferentz had taken its toll on a program that had very little margin for error. There was a nice resurgence in 1995 and 1996 with 8 and 9 wins respectively, including two impressive bowl victories, a decent but disappointing 7 win season in 1997, and then the 3 win debacle in 1998.
The cyclical pattern that we saw in Hayden’s last few years seems to parallel what we have also seen in the Ferentz era and will likely continue to see in 2010 and beyond:
Great or very good seasons juxtaposed against seasons with more losses and mediocrity.
And why does this cyclical pattern exist? Does it exist because of bad coaching, or does it exist because there are things that happen that not even the best coaching can solve? Does it exist because there are inherent obstacles in sustaining a high level of success at institutions that simply cannot recruit the best athletes year in and year out?
The cyclical extremes of Iowa football seem to be our reality regardless of who the coach is. I’m not saying we have to like it, but I do believe it is the fate that the football Gods have bestowed upon us. For now, however, we seem to be at the apex of the current cycle. Let’s enjoy the successes that we anticipate the 2010 season will bring. Go Hawks!
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