Kirk Ferentz is coming up on his, can you believe it, this is his 25th season coaching for the Iowa Hawkeyes That makes him the longest tenured coach, if not in the Big Ten, I think possibly the entire NCAA. Active tenured coaches. I’m sure former coach of Penn State, Joe Paterno, has a longer career.
The Iowa Hawkeyes have been, for the last several years, in fact most of Kirk Ferentz tenure, they’ve been a solid mid to high level team. Definitely dominant in the west, unless Wisconsin is on their game. Iowa is a tough team and has always been a tough team in the Big Ten. They are a big bruising kind of team.
Iowa has no major coaching changes this year. They’re just going to keep rolling along with that sort of average developed team. Kirk Ferentz has coached 302 games and has basically a 63% win average. That’s not bad. I mean, honestly that’s really good, but it’s an average team. It’s not an outstanding team. It’s not a fantastic team. It’s an average team that performs pretty much the same year in and year out.
Coming up on their non-conference schedule; Big Ten teams often get ridiculed for their non-conferences schedules because they usually don’t schedule very good teams. In this case Iowa is not going to be too much different this year. All three of the non-conference games for Iowa are against division one FBS teams, so at least we’re not scheduling anybody from the FCS.
Utah. Last year they had a 6-7 season. Each loss was two scores or more.
Iowa State. Iowa state had a lousy season last year. They went 4-8. Each loss but two were within one score, but still they lost eight out of 12 games. They did beat Iowa though by a little bit; 10 to 14.
Western Michigan. Western has not been having a good time since PJ Fleck left. In fact, their coach was fired last year or he quit or who knows what but Lance Taylor is the new coach. I don’t expect a whole lot of competition from Western, at least for Iowa, not yet.
Those three teams; Utah, Iowa State and Western Michigan, Iowa ought to come out the winner on all of those. At least, I would think so but like I said they lost to Iowa State last year and since Iowa hasn’t made any major coaching changes, it’s a toss-up. Iowa state has only won two of the last eight. They barely won last year so I think Iowa can win this year but you know that’s one of those toss-up games.
The non-conference games ought to go well. They ought to perform in those just as well as they ever have and they ought to win those games.
Then they hit Penn State and Michigan State. That’s going to be tough, really tough. Penn State is obviously probably tougher than Michigan State, but let’s face it even in a bad year Michigan State isn’t an easy team to beat. I would guess Penn State and Michigan State, you’re looking at really tough games.
Purdue has a new coach. Wisconsin has a new coach, but it’s Luke Fickell and Fickell is no slouch. Minnesota keeps rolling along. Minnesota and PJ Fleck is basically becoming the new Kirk Ferentz. He’s got just kind of an average team. It looks like they’re going to do well and then they kind of do average and that’s basically what happens to them. What I found interesting is that Iowa has this very close record against most of the Big Ten.
The key games this year, I think, are going to be against Penn State and Wisconsin. Penn State because it’s going to be their first Big Ten game and Iowa as we know if they don’t shine in those first games then they’re not going to shine later in the season.
Wisconsin is going to be a big deal because Luke fickle coming in as that new coach. He’s no slouch. He’s done a fine job at Cincinnati he’s going to give Iowa a run for their money. After Wisconsin you’ve got Minnesota, Northwestern, Rutgers, Illinois, and Nebraska. Out of those five games, Illinois is really the only challenge.
So my guess is this year with Iowa you’ve got a 9-3 season with losses potentially against, I’m going to say, Wisconsin, Penn State and Illinois. I think those are probably your most likely losses, but again this is all a prediction and based on Iowa being just an average consistent team. They might actually shine. They might knock Penn State down because Penn State isn’t ready for them. It’s just Iowa’s one of those not real predictable teams because they’re just so average and yet they’ve got some really good talent on that team.