Stop us if you’ve heard this before (actually, don’t), but a college football coach has a problem with the state of the sport.
The latest complainant: Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, who singled out ESPN for the role he says its analysts play in the modern era.
“It’s a little tougher,” the 68-year-old Ferentz answered during his weekly press conference on Monday when asked about the Hawkeyes’ sustained success. “With all the ESPN coverage and all that — in fact I was making a comment to a couple guys on the staff this morning, I was looking through there and saw three faces on that little thing on the left of your ESPN site where they’ve got the videos. Three guys that are basically coach killers or player killers that are just like — all they’re trying to do is just stir up controversy.
“So that’s kind of what’s out there now for people to take in. You wonder why there’s so much negativity.”
Without Ferentz putting a name on it, it’s impossible to know who he’s talking about. All of the videos currently featured on ESPN’s college football page were published after his comments and largely focus on the College Football Playoff.
But while the four-time Big Ten Coach of the Year was vague in his criticism of the ESPN pundits, the rest of his answer provided some insight into his thoughts. Recalling his time as Iowa’s offensive line coach in the 1980s, Ferentz referenced coaching three future NFL players, each of whom didn’t crack the Hawkeyes’ starting lineup until their redshirt senior seasons.
“Those are lessons that are a little tougher to sell right now,” he said.
That’s not to say that Ferentz is stuck in his ways — at least not in this instance — as he went on to note that Iowa has also benefitted from the transfer portal by adding players who have been instrumental in the Hawkeyes’ run to a Big Ten West title this season. And his complaint about the state of college football is hardly an uncommon one, as many coaches would obviously prefer the players have less power to control their destinies via the transfer portal and name, image and likeness (NIL).
If Ferentz is arguing that pressure from external forces, such as ESPN, has expedited that process, then he’d be right, although his criticism would also be misguided. It’s not a surprise, however, that Ferentz would take issue with the media, considering the negative attention that his employment of his son, Iowa offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz (who will not be retained beyond this season) has received.
[on3]
