Cover story: Past failures drive Ferentz into future
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In 1999, no one envisioned this.
No one foresaw a top-10 national ranking. No one predicted the national-championship hype. Heck, no one expected head coach Kirk Ferentz to last more than a few years in Iowa City — at least no one outside the program.
A 1-10 record can do that to people.
While he still has fond memories of his senior year, former cornerback Joe Slattery called Iowa's 1999 season, Ferentz's first at Iowa, "The absolute worst of times."
At that time, Ferentz wasn't Iowa's $3 million man. He wasn't widely considered one of the country's top coaches. He wasn't being courted by NFL general managers.
He was just Hayden Fry's successor. The guy replacing the legend.
Sure, he had coached at Maine, been Fry's offensive-line coach, and worked under Bill Belichick with the Cleveland Browns. But even then, Bill Belichick wasn't Bill Belichick — at least not yet.
That was then. This is now.
The down years
Ferentz remembers the down years. The 1-10s, the 3-9s, the 6-6s.
They haunt him. Drive him. Keep him on edge.
Even after all of his team's success from 2002-04, even after the Year of Shonn Greene, even after last year's Orange Bowl win, Ferentz won't allow himself to look back at the transformation his program has undertaken over the last 11 years.
"I just know it can go right back real fast," he said Tuesday. "I don't spend much time thinking about it."
Ferentz never wants to go back.
Not after the 19-18 dip from 2005-07. Not after two-consecutive upsets over Penn State. And especially not after last season's 11-2 campaign.
He tells his players that. He talks about the struggles, the ups and downs, what went wrong. Everything is fragile, he says. Everything.
His hope is that they learn from the past. His hope is that 1999 never repeats itself.
"It's important to understand why those certain dips happen," senior quarterback Ricky Stanzi said. "Why did we have a couple stretches of ball games in a season when we didn't win? If you don't learn from those things, you're doomed to repeat it."
Stanzi remembers the down years, too. More specifically, he remembers 2006 and '07 — his first two seasons on campus. The Hawkeyes went 12-13 over that span. No bowl wins. Four-game losing streaks in each season.
Ferentz talked about those seasons at Iowa media day earlier this month. He worried aloud that his younger players would take the 2009 season for granted. He wondered they had been spoiled too soon. He feared they didn't realize all the work that goes into a BCS bid.
As Ferentz said, "That ain't the real world."
The experience to repeat
For every freshman who views the Orange Bowl as a rite of passage, the Hawkeyes have countless players at the top who know just how hard it is to repeat.
Stanzi, Adrian Clayborn, Christian Ballard, Julian Vandervelde, Brett Greenwood, Derrell Johnson-Koulianos, Allen Reisner — they've all experienced the down years in one form or another. They know all the trial and error, all the work, all the film sessions that went into last season's success.
They know that ain't the real world.
"For us to be there when [the down years] happened can only help us with our mindset and how we pass that along to the younger guys," Stanzi said.
It's this experience — and the Hawkeyes' plethora of returning stars — that has the national media buzzing about Iowa's chances to win the Big Ten.
ESPN's Ivan Maisel recently picked Ferentz's squad to play in the BCS championship game. Sports Illustrated pegged the Hawkeyes No. 6 in its preseason poll. College-football pundit Phil Steele predicted Iowa would play in the Rose Bowl.
The program is ranked No. 9 by the Associated Press — its highest since that preseason slot since 1988.
This is what Stanzi calls "outside noise." It's what Ferentz dismisses as meaningless information. And it's what made Slattery, the cornerback from the '99 team, lament, "During my time there, there was never that chatter."
Vandervelde, a senior offensive guard, said, "You can look at the hype all you want, but realistically … where we are at the beginning isn't really going to [affect] where we are at the end. If we end up not ranked, no one's really going to care that we started off in the top 10."
But the Hawkeyes' preseason hype isn't without reason. The team's experience is seemingly unprecedented. So, too, is its playmakers on both sides of the ball.
Highlighted by preseason All-American Clayborn, the defensive line returns all four of its starters, leading many experts to call it the best unit in the country.
Likewise, Tyler Sash and Brett Greenwood patrol the deep secondary again this season. The duo has combined for 18 career interceptions.
And Marvin McNutt and Johnson-Koulianos both return at wide receiver, perhaps giving Ferentz and offensive coordinator Ken O'Keefe its most-explosive tandem on the outside in their 12 seasons in Iowa City.
As Johnson-Koulianos said at Iowa media day, "I think it's going to be fireworks all year."
But Stanzi cautioned against crowning Iowa too soon, saying, "Just because we have experience doesn't mean that we're going to capitalize on it."
Indeed, the quarterback, who's going into his third year as a starter, knows the line between success and failure is razor thin. He, like Ferentz, learned that from the down years.
It's the team's attitude, Stanzi said, that ultimately will be the deciding factor.
"I think that's the root of all evil almost when it comes to sports," he said.
1999 still a driving force
Slattery doesn't quite remember when it happened. Maybe it was the fourth week of camp; maybe the fourth week of the 1999 season.
But Norm Parker — having served as Ferentz's defensive coordinator for only a short time — told a meeting room full of players, "This is the best coach I have ever worked for."
Funny thing is, Ferentz's supposed failures have perhaps made him an even better coach.
At a recent press conference, the 12-year head coach was asked if there were any similarities between Iowa's 1985 Rose Bowl team and the 2010 squad.
He didn't even want to acknowledge any comparison.
Ferentz knows there's so much that can go wrong in a season, so much that can derail a seemingly unflappable team.
Indeed, the down years still drive him — now more so than ever.
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