University of Iowa Football

Media Conference
Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Kirk Ferentz
KIRK FERENTZ: Sorry I missed Tom (Brands). I'm
sure that was enlightening and entertaining. Usually is
when he's around. But what a great event that
(Grapple on the Gridiron) is, great initiative, and should
be a great environment on Saturday afternoon, as well.
Wish him all the best.

He's a tremendous man, a tremendous football coach,

and our game is going to miss him. Certainly the
players that had an opportunity to work with him I think
would echo that, as would his staff. Just all of us were
very, very saddened by that news, and give our best to
him certainly.

Just looking backward for a second, we were really

pleased to get a quality road victory against a very
tough, challenging opponent. We knew it was going to
be a challenge going into Indiana, and it certainly
proved to be. Happy to be 4-0 on the road right now.
It's a real good accomplishment for our football team.
Obviously happy to get the ninth victory, and the other
part I think we're really happy about is just our fourth
quarter performance has been good all season long. I
want to compliment the team on that.

You know, prior to his announcement, Minnesota was

dealing with a lot of injuries early in the season. I know
he spoke about that a little bit. Most recently they dealt
with his announcement, his situation, and bottom line is
they've played very, very well the last couple weeks out
against very tough opponents. We've got a very big
challenge on our hands as we move forward here.

And then on top of that, it's our first win in November.

November football is always very, very important. A lot
of good things took place over the course of the
weekend.
Now we move forward, and as we head into this week
we have the same four captains: Drew and Jordan on
the defensive side and then Austin and C.J. on the
offensive side.
Injury-wise it looks like we'll get Jordan Canzeri back.
He's been able to practice pretty efficiently and well, so
happy about that. Ike Boettger is making good
progress, so we'll know more after tomorrow, see what
it looks like, but it looks like he's getting in a position
where he can help us out, as well, so happy about that
part of it.
Obviously good to be back into Kinnick. We're looking
forward to having that chance, and it's another tough
challenge with Minnesota.
Just a sidebar on that front, I think everybody involved
with college football was certainly sad when Coach Kill
made his announcement a couple weeks ago, and
from my standpoint at least, I think it's very easy to say
he's clearly been great for the University of Minnesota.
I think he's been great for the Big Ten, and I would say
for the entire game of college football, and has been for
quite some time.

Rev #2 by #177 at 2015-11-10 21:24:00 GMT

Offensively they've got a veteran quarterback who's a

really good football player. They're a big, physical
group up front like they traditionally are. Good backs,
good receivers, so that's going to be a big challenge for
our team.
Then flipping it on the other side of the football, they're
very aggressive defensively, run very well at all
positions, extremely good in the secondary. I know
they feel great about those guys, and rightfully so.
And then special teams wise they have two of the
better specialists you're going to find in the conference.
They're a very, very good football team, and we're
going to have a big challenge on our hands.
November as I said earlier is a big month, certainly a
big month for any college football team. Certainly it is
for us, and to be back in Kinnick is really special, and to
be there in a night game is always a special thing.
Twenty-sixth year now being involved in Kinnick
Stadium. It never gets old. It's just a very, very special
place to play college football. We'll have a great
environment Saturday night. There's no doubt about
that. But that being said, the fans can't play the game,
just like when we're on the road, the opposing fans
don't decide the game. It's going to get decided on the
field, so we're going to have to have a great week of
preparation. We'll have to be ready to go at kickoff
against this team. We've got our work cut out and
we've been working on that, and we look forward to
trying to finish the week out well.

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Q. C.J. seems all year to have a sort of innate

ability to make the play, to make the kind of plays
that make the difference between winning and
losing. How key is it for a team to have a guy like
that who can just make those plays?
KIRK FERENTZ: Well, guys that can do that at any
position, that's a special thing, and I'm not sure you
teach it. I'm not sure how it develops or whatever. But
certain players just have a little something extra they
add to the equation, and certainly C.J. has
demonstrated that now this season over nine games
and last year in one. So he's really playing well, and
that's part of the reason we're doing well right now as a
team.
Q. Akrum said he didn't practice today, and Jordan
is looking really good. How do you plan to
implement Jordan? Is he back into the game plan?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, I think he could have played
last week, and our concern there was just the same
path we went down with LeShun. I think we put him
out there and he thought he was okay and he wasn't,
and then we had an average back out there, and that's
not good for him, not good for anybody. We wanted to
be really conservative with Jordan. I think he could
have played last week. We just wanted to stick to the
plan.
I think we're all convinced right now he's full speed,
and that's a good thing. LeShun is certainly full speed
again. We've got Derrick, and hopefully Akrum will be
ready to go. We'll know that on Friday or Saturday. If
he can't, he can't, and we've certainly been down that
road a couple times this year. But if we have them all,
that's great, and we'll play them all if they're healthy.
Q. Speaking of Jerry Kill, you and other people
have really talked highly of him since his
retirement. Is that partially the way that he came
up, salt-of-the-earth type, started at the high school
level, teacher, hard-nosed, was never given a
position he was, just kind of graduated to become
a head coach, just the way he built his program?
KIRK FERENTZ: It is, and I don't mean this in a
disrespectful way to coaches that haven't traveled that
path. Bill Belichick didn't. Bill has been a lifetime NFL
guy. But he started at the bottom, too. He worked for
basically nothing in Baltimore and then worked his way
up the ladder.
But yeah, that's my opinion of Jerry. Jerry has done a
great job every level he's been. He's taken jobs that
weren't necessarily great jobs and turned them into
good jobs, too. I mean, every place he's gone it's been
better. But I think the thing I'm probably most
impressed with is just the way they've operated as a
staff. Staff has gone with him for the majority every

Rev #2 by #177 at 2015-11-10 21:24:00 GMT

place they've been.

They got on our radar at Southern Illinois, really got on
it at Northern Illinois. We'd see them on film playing
very well, and as I said on the teleconference, I was
hopeful Minnesota wouldn't hire him. I was hoping
nobody in the Big Ten would, but Minnesota figured it
out, and they hired a great coach and a great staff.
And the work that they've done up there, the
improvement they've made is really clear to see. You
don't have to be an expert to figure that out.
But being around him, he's just a great, great guy, and I
think he's been great for college football. He's great for
young people. As the world moves faster and football
gets a little bit more visible and all that, sometimes I
think we lose sight what this is all about, and it's about
the players and the kind of experience they have while
they're at our schools, whether you're a high school
coach or a college coach, that's what it's all about. The
NFL is a whole different deal, but when you're coaching
in college and high school, that's when -- it's all about
the experience for the players. That's to me the most
important thing that happens.
Q. How did Tevaun Smith come out of the game?
KIRK FERENTZ: He's good. He was sore on Sunday
as you might imagine, but it was all basically in the
area that he got hit, that's where his soreness was.
He's improved each day. Looked good today. Not
much fun, but that's part of the game, too. When you
play football, you're going to have some tough
Sundays.
Q. When Tom Brands came to you about hosting
the event Saturday morning in the stadium, how
did that conversation go down?
KIRK FERENTZ: Well, I think they've been noodling
this idea around for a while. Like most things, it takes a
while for it to percolate. It's not like we're going to be
doing anything at 11:00 or whatever time they're going.
I think it's a great thing. It's great for the sport first and
foremost, and I happen to be a wrestling fan. I'm not
an expert by any stretch. I'm not even a novice, but I
really enjoy it, and I have tremendous respect, like I do
for all the coaches on our campus. Tom, all those guys
really just do a great job.
But it's great for the sport of college wrestling, which is
I think one of the premier sports there is. I understand
Oklahoma State was very receptive to it. That could
have been an issue, as well.
So it's just a win-win situation, and for them to do it in
Kinnick Stadium, make history there, why not. I think
that's just a fantastic thing for the University.
Q. Where did your respect for wrestling come

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from? Is that something you've always carried

since you've been here?
KIRK FERENTZ: My first competition would have been
January, maybe February, but it was in the winter of
1982. I'll never forget walking into the old Field House,
and first of all, I was amazed at the crowd. Beyond that,
it seemed like everybody in the place knew everything
that was going on, like every move. They're coaching
every move, and I was just like in total amazement.
That blew me away. But it was so fun to watch our
teams compete.
Since that time, I've had a chance to get to know Dan
(Gable) a little bit, and I have a lot of respect for him. I
had a chance to read a couple of the books about him,
and he's an amazing. We have a few Iowa treasures,
certainly Norman Borlaug, go right on, James Van
Allen, and Dan Gable certainly one of those people.
The guy is an icon, just an icon, and a tremendous
human being, a family guy. I just got done talking
about Jerry Kill. I mean, ditto with Dan Gable. What
an outstanding Iowan, an outstanding person.
If you like sports, I don't know how you couldn't like
wrestling. I don't know about competing in wrestling,
but watching it, that's a different story.
Q. One of your players said, yeah, I tried it and then
I got out of it.
KIRK FERENTZ: Mark Sindlinger had a great career.
It's really tough to do two sports in college. I don't know
if you could do it anymore, but Mark did a great job with
it.
We had a lot of guys back in the '80s that would go
over and wrestle guys that were heavyweights in high
school. They'd go over there and get beat up. As a line
coach I thought that was the greatest thing in the world
to be in that environment with that caliber of athlete
and that caliber of coaching. What a great opportunity
for our players.
We don't get much of that anymore, but it was really a
good thing. I think they would have taken Riley Reiff if
he would have been interested, but that didn't work out.
Q. You said a few weeks ago it's hard sometimes to
focus on one game at a time. How do you see
these guys dealing with it?
KIRK FERENTZ: You know, I can only speak for myself
on this one. It seems to me that maybe we're over the
initial wave, if you will, over the last couple weeks.
Right now I think it seems like we're down to business.
It doesn't seem to be as much distraction or what have
you. I haven't really paid too close attention on the
outside, but it seems like things have died down a little
bit. It's been interesting to say the least.

Rev #2 by #177 at 2015-11-10 21:24:00 GMT

I found it interesting last week there was somebody

that has had access to a microphone, who suggested
we knew our schedule five years ago. I think there
were 11 teams in the Big Ten five years ago if I'm not
mistaken. There was no Leaders or Legends, no East
or West. The world has changed a lot in five years. It's
been a great avenue for a lot of interesting dialogue
and discourse, but I think our guys are pretty much
wired into what we're doing, and we'd better be
because we've got a big challenge on our hands
Saturday.
Q. This could be the first team to ever start and win
10 games in school history. I was asking your
players about that chance to go down in history; to
a man they said, we just want to be 1-0 at the end
of the week. Does that tell you that what you're
telling them has resonated?
KIRK FERENTZ: We'll find out Saturday because
we've got a real big challenge and we're going to have
to really have a good week of preparation. That's really
the best way to get there, and we've tried to explain
that to our players. Back during the bye week we told
them to think big, but no matter how big they thought
and whatever they may have been dreaming up, you
can only get there week by week. That's about all you
can control. I know it's boring and mundane. But for
us to be focused or spend time on anything else right
now is really counterproductive, and to me the best
thing to do is worry about their academics, worry about
the game plan, preparation, and maybe go on a date or
something like that if they've got time. That's great,
too. We just need to worry about this one because it's
tricky sledding out there.
Q. Is revenge a real thing in your sport, or is it
more avenging performance?
KIRK FERENTZ: They did what they were supposed to
do last year. We didn't. We didn't reciprocate. That's
what competition is about. We walked into one and I
say it to our players all the time; in sports you typically
get what you deserve, and we got what we deserved.
We got outcoached, outplayed, any way you want to
slice it. There are a lot of things that happened last
year, and that was last year. This is a different team,
different year, and different opportunities.
That being said, we have total respect for them and we
have full firsthand knowledge just how well these guys
can play. You know what kind of team they are.
They've got a lot of the same players back, and we're
going to have to be at our best. The big thing
motivating us right now is just to play our best football
this year. That's what we're worried about and focused
on, and that's really all we can control.

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Q. Your running backs all seem to generally

respect each other and like each other. How much
does that help with the chemistry part, the fact that
they seem to get along?
KIRK FERENTZ: I think that's true of our whole football
team, but it certainly is at that position. That's a
position where you can have jealousy creep in pretty
quickly and pretty easily. But on one hand it's been kind
of easy; everybody keeps asking how we're going to
rotate. It's easy. The guys that are healthy play, so
they've helped us out with their little tweaks, injuries
that we've had.
They're a good group of guys. They work hard. I think
they've got mutual respect, and you start the two older
guys. They've been here the longest. They've really
paid their dues and they've already done some good
things this year. Hopefully we can finish strong with
both LeShun and Jordan, hopefully both of those guys
get a chance to play the rest of the games the way they
want to play, and then I think Derrick and Akrum have
certainly done a nice job of complementing. If we have
all four of them healthy, we're a better football team.
They understand that and we certainly believe that.
Q. In watching the game again from the other day, I
seem to have lost track of what holding is.
KIRK FERENTZ: I just flashed back to a meeting, for
some reason I must have made somebody mad. I
drew the short straw. I got sent to a meeting. They
sent one coach from every staff to Chicago, and the
guy that was one of the several people who were at the
meeting was a guy who actually threw a holding flag
out there in 1981 against the University of Minnesota. I
remember it like it was yesterday. We were down,
going in for a touchdown and we got a holding call. He
was one of the guys, to your topic, and you know, boy,
you talk about Excedrin headache number whatever, I
mean, I walked out of there, like, oh, please don't ever
send me back to this meeting. Thirty years later
there's still a debate about what is holding, but there
was a lot of debate that day, and there was a very
prominent former head coach who was a line coach; he
and this official got into a long, really uninteresting
discussion from my vantage point about holding, and to
this day the debate still rages on.
It's just one of those deals. It's always been debated. I
think the officials in our conference really do work hard
at it. Tough job, really tough job. So we had a couple
calls the other day that were tough to take, but that's
football.
Q. Do you coach by the way it's going to be called,
or do you just -KIRK FERENTZ: We try to coach what we think is
proper technique, and there's a lot of different ways to

Rev #2 by #177 at 2015-11-10 21:24:00 GMT

skin a cat, too, so not like we invented blocking here,

but we have a certain way we like to do things.
Sometimes what happens in football, it looks like a guy,
something happened that really didn't, a guy got
tripped up or whatever, but those are things that are
bang-bang, and it's easy after you go back and watch
the film and say, geez, why did they call this or why did
they do that. In live speed it's a whole different arena.
The thing I would say about Big Ten officiating from my
vantage point at least, I think it's been really good for a
long time. I know they work really hard at it, and that's
everybody, Bill Carollo right on down. The guys are
courteous, they're good to work with, and tolerate an
occasional outburst, which I really appreciate that.
They're good, professional people.
Q. Is there a -- rerouting and holding, when they
see that, is that the automatic?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, rerouting or if a guy just gets
jerked, those kinds of things. But again, sometimes it
can be -- a guy might get tripped up and it looks like it's
a hold and you can see why it would look like that, but
when you have a chance to really zero in on it or replay
it, it's a different deal. So that's probably the hardest
call. That and pass interference are the two hardest
calls, I think, in football.
Again, they do an amazing job if you look at how many
plays are run in a game.
Q. When you look at this team, in some ways it
seems to be most representative of you, but in
some ways they're an understated, hard-working,
tough, physical, do their job, do it well. What's the
chemistry like with the staff and the players?
KIRK FERENTZ: Fortunately they're way more athletic
than I am, or we'd be in serious trouble, okay. That
would be a big deal.
We have a really good group right now. The players
have really gelled. They've come together. To Pat's
point earlier, I think they generally care about each
other, and you see that in the way they play, and the
way they practice, the way they travel.
Our staff is the same way, and I kind of touched on that
earlier, and it's just like -- I just talked about Coach
Kill's staff. We kind of have been going through what
we went through back in the early 2000s, getting
everybody in the right seats and then really getting an
appreciation for what it is we're trying to do programwise, what it's like to live in Iowa City. Those are
different things if you haven't been here before. I went
through it in 1981.
There's a process to everything that you do, but it

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starts with good people, and that's what I said back in

January. I was convinced at that time that we had the
right people here, it was just a matter of getting a little
better focus and everybody kind of working together a
little bit better, and same thing you ask your team to do.
Q. Everybody in their rooms, from staff to players,
there was a lot of adversity, whether it was on the
field, off the field, but it seemed to be kind of a
selective mindset to just kind of get to work, and it
seemed like there was a lot of chemistry involved
with them because of it. Do you as the staff kind of
feel that same shared bond?
KIRK FERENTZ: There's two things. If you can't deal
with adversity and you're involved in competitive sports
or competitive anything, you're going to have a tough
life. You go back to the '70s where there were a couple
of team, you'd just go and knock people down like
bowling pins, if you were at the right place. Those days
are gone with scholarships changing and all that.
Things have become a lot more competitive, and it
probably parallels the NFL a little bit. We're not exactly
like them, but it's a lot more like them than it was in the
'70s for sure.
So there's an opportunity to have good teams, but
every day is not going to be a walk in the park. That's
just how it is. So if you can't deal with that, you
probably should do something else.
And then I think the next part is everybody involved has
to understand that, whether there's players, coaches,
staff, support staff folks. You can't whine about things
that go wrong. It's not all about pointing fingers or
appointing blame, which I know we live in a world
where that's a big thing right now. To me the question
is how do you work through situations? How do you
improve? What's the way to address something when
it goes wrong? That's the challenge, and it's easy to
say, hey, this guy, that guy and all that kind of stuff, but
what are the answers. We have enough people telling
us what the problems are, but what's the answer to the
problem, what's the solution. That's the key in anything
you do. But you've got to have the right people. You've
got to have the right people, people that got a little bit
of mettle and some substance to them.
Q. It's a fun uniform week when you guys wear a
new uniform. Can you walk us through the process
how that started, who had their hands in on it and
what say you had?
KIRK FERENTZ: I guess I got veto power. It's like
being the governor, I guess, or whatever. It was a tidal
wave; are you kidding me? That was part of the
process back in the out-of-season, just all the things
that we talked about; what are some of the things we
might be interested in doing, and that got on the

Rev #2 by #177 at 2015-11-10 21:24:00 GMT

agenda. It was not at the bottom, but it got on the

agenda. The bottom line is our players are really
excited about it, so that's a great thing.
My sense is the fans are excited about it, which, hey, if
we can make them more excited without playing a snap
on Saturday, that's a good thing, too, so I think it's a
win-win situation, and we have let the players see
them, actually see them in live person. It was really a
dramatic moment in my life to have those guys see it.
We've gone through all that stuff, so we got that out of
the way, and hopefully now we can get back to getting
ready for a tough football game. But it's kind of a sign
of the times. The players like it, they think it's great.
Again, I said earlier, I'm not a total tyrant. Every now
and then we've got to throw them a bone and let them
enjoy it.
Q. Did you veto a whole bunch of different ones or
was there just one, you're like, get it over with?
KIRK FERENTZ: This really is not my line of expertise
I've got to tell you. I like the uniforms we've got, so to
me why would you change them. We've got classic
uniforms, and there's several teams in college football
that do, so why would you change those. But we're
going to make an exception, and with some of the
younger guys on the staff -- probably shouldn't talk in
terms of younger or older. That's probably not wise on
my part.
But some of the youngers guys with some fresh ideas,
et cetera, and then I've got a select panel of experts
that I go to, like does this look good or not, that are not
associated with our team directly, and they gave it the
thumbs up. So hopefully we get the thumbs up on
Saturday.
But it's a fun thing, so what the heck. I'm not a fun
killer, either. We're all for it. If it makes us play better,
then we may be in them next Saturday, too.
Q. Would you be open to doing it in subsequent
years or next year, like once a year?
KIRK FERENTZ: I'm open to anything. I've got a little
scar tissue from the last time we were in alternative
uniforms; I'll be honest with you about that. Scar tissue
sometimes takes a while to -- it breaks down
eventually, so I've been told, and in this case it did, so
I'm open to it.
Q. Some of your best contributors are the guys you
offered scholarships on the very last day or
thereabouts.
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, and I think it illustrates two
things. It's just what a fine line it is for winning. We
talk about that all the time. It's no different in recruiting.

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What you don't know as a recruit, or a recruiter, is

what's really inside the guy's chest, what's inside his
heart, what his level of determination and pride are.
You try to evaluate those things, but you're evaluating
people, so it's like anything, any walk of life, it's not an
exact science.
So that's the overriding thing these guys that you're all
mentioning have great work ethic. They've got a high
level of pride. They really aspire to be good and do
something significant. It's easy to coach those guys.
So when you find that kind of player, and you know, we
all do this and the NFL does the same thing, you make
too much about a quarter of an inch or whatever it may
be or a 10th of a second on the 40, it's just an amazing
thing. That's what makes sports so intriguing, and
probably anything when you're making decisions about
people and what have you.
It's an interesting discussion to say the least, and thank
goodness it's like the walk-ons that we've had that have
done so well here. It's been a big part of our history
and our fabric, our tradition. Hopefully that'll continue.
Q. VandeBerg, he came in with like three or four
other wide receivers and immediately got on the
field. His level of growth -KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, so next time you think about
complimenting us for our recruiting evaluations, all
right, we wanted Matt to be a gray shirt, which I'm still
trying to figure out the gray shirt concept kind of, but
two guys we've had, Matt and Julian Vandervelde,
who's still playing and is having a great career with
Philly, and then Matt came in, to your point, and played
as a true freshman. It just shows you what a crap
shoot recruiting is.

Josey Jewell and Cole Fisher who never played in

his fifth year and then you've got Neimann who
was receiver originally -KIRK FERENTZ: I just made the comment to our staff
the other day. Now you can see why Northern Illinois
wins a lot of games, because they recruit guys like
Ben. What a tremendous football player.
We've talked about Josey, and then Cole is another
good traditional Iowa story, a guy that in his fifth year
just took off at all fill-in plays for him. That's one thing I
learned in the '80s, too, not from wrestling but coaching
here, that you just never know when a guy is going to -when it's going to hit for him. It's no different than in
high school. You read about some of the great players
in all sports that didn't really start playing until they
were juniors or seniors in high school and playing well.
So you just never know. That's a fun part about it.
That's what makes it really intriguing and exciting.
Q. If that person with the microphone who made
that comment about your schedule called you and
asked you if you would come on his program,
would you take that call?
KIRK FERENTZ: That's a good question. I don't know.
It's kind of like that scene from Rocky, right, where -it's Hulk Hogan, right? Is that the guy? Hulk Hogan
beats the crap out of Rocky for a while, and Rocky is
like, what the heck. It's a game. I understand that.
People that have a national mic have to make news.
But I also say this: I really respect people that do their
research, do their homework before they throw things
out there, and I probably should just be quiet right now,
so I will.

To that point, that's why I don't get too excited about

where we rank in February. I'm a lot more interested
where we rank in January. That's a true evaluation.
And I'll turn that right back to the wrestling. If you talk
to or just read about Dan Gable and the wrestling
program traditionally, they don't always go after the
guys that won 12 state championships. They look for
other things, too, and it seems like it's worked pretty
good for them. So you learn things through the years
about how people do things, and it also ties into where
you're at.
We don't get the luxury of just picking 12 five stars
every year. We don't get that luxury, and nobody here
is complaining about it, because it's still about where a
guy is at three, four, five years into his career, and we
tell recruits that all the time. Hey, if you play as a
freshman, great, but it's really more about where you're
at in year three, four and five. That's what's important.
Q. Looking at the linebacker position, you have

Rev #2 by #177 at 2015-11-10 21:24:00 GMT

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