Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz is entering his 24th season in Iowa City, where the Hawkeyes are in bowls far more often than they are sitting home for the holidays. The Hawkeyes have not won a Big 10 Championship since 2004, but Ferentz does have two under his belt.
Despite having a .618 winning percentage, which ranks sixth all-time in school history, his 178 wins surpass even the great Hayden Fry (143).
Ferentz told reporters at Big Ten Media Day on Tuesday that there is a lot of “vagueness and uncertainty” with college football right now.
“We really don’t have a firm structure. We don’t have a basic set of operating rules.”While also commenting briefly about Name Image Likeness (NIL), Iowa is not going to get many of the top recruits that Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State will in the conference. Once USC and UCLA join in 2024, that likelihood is slated to fall even further. However, Ferentz is to Big 10 football what Tom Izzo is to Big 10 basketball...when he speaks, you tend to agree.
When Ferentz is backed up by Pat Fitzgerald at Northwestern, you know there’s an underlying problem that cannot be fixed overnight. Fitzgerald, entering his 17th season in Evanston, is one of the most respected coaches in all of college football, with the Wildcats having made two Big 10 Championship Games in the past four years.
I feel I am legally obligated as part of The Wise Guys Sports Show to state they were beaten soundly by Ohio State in both appearances.
“The game on the field has never been better. Once you walk off the field, it’s never been more chaotic.”I know coaches usually use hyperbole and understatements during media days, but Fitzgerald could not have said it any better by being vague.
As I have discussed before on this blog, college football at the Division I-A level (I will never call it FBS) is the only NCAA sport that does not award a National Champion. The champion is awarded by the College Football Playoff (CFP) committee, and formerly the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). When we had split national champions as far back as we remember, there was always a flaw with the system. If Miami won the National Championship in the Associated Press Poll at 12-0, and the Washington Huskies finished 12-0 and voted champions in the Coaches Poll, the logical thought would be to have the two giants square off a few weeks later. However, this was 1991, and the possibility of multiple schools laying claim to being the best in the land was par for the course.
What would happen if we had say three teams from the SEC with only one loss and no playoff system? Or worse…what if the CFP expands and sets rules on automatic qualifiers where someone is shut out? We would have seen this in the Big 10 just last year had Iowa stunned Michigan. This would have seen Michigan finally conquer Ohio State, only to see their postseason dreams dashed by having two losses, yet being more deserving than Iowa, who would have finished 11-1.
If there is talk of college football breaking away from the NCAA, then a governing body needs to be thought of as more than a pipe dream. The slippery slope would be that the NCAA sanctions would be subject to dismissal if they are not the oversary of the schools bringing in the vast majority of the athletic money.
When you start taking NIL money into account for the student athletes, could you see a potential of college football players no longer being classified as amateurs if the sport breaks away from the NCAA completely? You could forget the USFL and XFL as a potential farm system for the NFL entirely.
-JC24