Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz should toughen up rather than complain about reporter's 'tone' | Opinion
The last thing the Iowa football program needs is a referendum on whether Kirk Ferentz respects the jobs of the reporters who ask him questions after games. It doesn't matter to the fans, it shouldn't matter to anyone in the media and it doesn't have an impact one way or the other on how many points the Hawkeyes score on Saturday.
But the mini-controversy that has bubbled around Ferentz this week after insulting Cleveland.com columnist Doug Lesmerises, then walking it back with a written apology, then undoing the apology with an appearance on a radio show, has been instructive about the media ecosystem around college football.
And the loud-and-clear message is that so many years making so much money with unbridled power has made Ferentz soft, whiny and ultimately ineffective. For $7 million a year, can’t he afford to toughen up a little?
Ferentz has been the coach at Iowa since 1999, which means he’s done a whole heck of a lot of press conferences. But like most college football coaches, not much of that time has been spent answering truly difficult questions. And now, with the Hawkeyes going through a bad season and the stench of nepotism hanging over his program, Ferentz's instinct is to belittle and complain rather than hold himself accountable for allowing his son Brian to coordinate perhaps the worst offense in college football.
At his news conference Tuesday, Ferentz referred to a series of questions by Lesmerises after Iowa’s 54-10 loss to Ohio State as an “interrogation” and said he was cheered up by the idea that, “As bad as today was, it could have been worse because I could have been that guy. I could have been that guy, had his job and had to act like he did.”
Marie Antoinette would have been proud of such gratuitous snobbery, but most of us in the media don’t mind eating a little cake. If you take offense to the worth of your profession being questioned by those in power, journalism is the wrong business to be in.
But it would be difficult for any reasonable or remotely objective person to watch that press conference and see an interrogation or anything even resembling disrespect. You can watch and judge for yourself, but here’s how it went:
Reporter: “Why are you willing to change a player's position and put in a new quarterback in the middle of the year, but you wouldn’t be willing to evaluate an assistant coach and make a decision in the middle of the year?”
Ferentz: “I think you’re talking about two separate job descriptions and two separate areas of responsibility. I know people do it. I know it's been done this year, it's just not my preference. My preference is to play it out, and there’s evidence to show it’s worked pretty well in the past, so we’ll play it out and do our assessments and evaluations when everything is over. The season isn't over and when it’s over, we’ll make an evaluation on what's best for our program.”
Reporter: “You have one of the least-productive offenses in the country.”
Ferentz: “I’ve noticed that, yeah.”
Reporter: “Everybody's noticed it.”
Ferentz: "Thank you.”
Reporter: “Do you believe you're putting the Iowa football program in a bad spot by having that kind of production on one side of the ball, and it's run by one of your family members?”
Ferentz: “It's got no bearing on who the person is, all right? It’s just a matter of who is coaching our football team, the guys on our staff are guys I think have demonstrated success. They're good people and we’re going to keep pushing forward. I don’t feel like we’re doing anything wrong.”
Reporter: “When you get to the end of the year and you do make that evaluation, will evaluating Brian be any different than evaluating any other assistant coach?”
Ferentz: “At least I’ve tried to treat everybody with consistency on our staff, past and present. Same things with players. Have had three family members play as well in our program, and they have to earn everything they get, just like coaches do.”
And that was that.
What’s unusual here, however, isn’t the line of questioning or the back-and-forth. That happens sometimes when reporters ask what needs to be asked.
The issue is Ferentz somehow taking offense or not expecting to be challenged on the idea that his son runs an offense that ranks 128 out of 131 teams in scoring offense and 130th in yards per play.
The stench of nepotism
Ferentz isn't the first college football coach to give his son a prominent staff position.
Bobby Bowden made his son Jeff the offensive coordinator at Florida State from 2001-06. Jay Paterno was on staff at Penn State from 1995 to 2011. Steve Spurrier Jr. worked under his father at South Carolina, including four seasons as co-offensive coordinator. Mark Richt made his son Jon the quarterbacks coach at Miami. Those are just a few examples. It's happened plenty in the pro ranks, too.
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But it is nepotism, which is a predictable byproduct of a system that allows coaches to run roughshod over norms and best practices while weak administrators do anything they can to avoid confrontation. To make this happen in Iowa’s case, they’ve even had to construct a system where Brian Ferentz technically reports to the athletics director, Gary Barta, so they avoid running afoul of the state’s anti-nepotism laws.
That should be a story every single day because of how blatantly it mocks the rules so many regular Iowans have to live by. It should especially be a story now, as Iowa’s offense devolves into an embarrassing fascination every Saturday.
This has to be an emotionally difficult spot for Ferentz when he sees the kind of criticism his son has received, but he wasn’t born yesterday. Deep down, he has to know that the obvious consequences of such dramatic failure will be magnified when he has chosen to put a family member in charge of that mess.
That’s not only fair, it's part of the necessary role an independent media is supposed to play in covering sports.
On Wednesday, after his comments about Lesmerises received significant backlash, Ferentz issued a written apology that read, in part, “I should not have been dismissive of one of your colleagues — his questions were fair. I have a high respect for the work that you do, and I am appreciative of how you cover our team. You ask tough and pointed questions but do so with a high degree of professionalism.”
Soon after on his radio show, Ferentz reiterated those comments but added this: “It’s not fun, but it’s part of the job. So no problem there, and I didn’t have a problem with the question. I just have a real problem with the tone … if anything else, it just reinforces and makes me appreciate my feelings toward the Iowa media. They ask hard questions and do what they have to do, and I appreciate that and respect that. More so, what I respect is the quality of people I have a chance to interact with on a routine basis and the way they go about their jobs.”
Though Ferentz doesn't realize it, that statement is not actually a compliment to the reporters who cover Iowa regularly. He's suggesting that the local guys get it, and it's the person from out of town parachuting in and asking questions in a way he doesn’t like.
Ferentz is wrong about that, too. There’s been lots of hard-hitting journalism from Iowa-based reporters, especially around the 2020 controversy related to the racial climate within his program. And Lesmerises wasn’t the only person in that press conference Saturday asking about a potential offensive coordinator change. To the extent that the Iowa media has a better “tone” in his mind, it’s only because they’re around him almost every day and spend far more time asking about the good stuff than why he hasn’t fired his son.
But sometimes, the uncomfortable story is the only important story. And if Ferentz wants to change that dynamic, there’s a far more effective solution than complaining about someone's tone.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Iowa's Kirk Ferentz should toughen up rather than whine about reporter
