Dec. 30, 2004
- Ferentz to ESPN: Sounds corny, but Iowa is home
- Iowa and LSU: Side-by-side in final BCS list
- UI, Ferentz ink contract extension
- Big Ten Championship merchandise
- Bowl game ticket information
- Listen to the bowl game online!
- Watch Kirk next Tuesday live!
- Purchase your Hawkeye tickets online
- Listen to the Hawkeyes on XM Radio
Editor’s Note: The following was written by Emily Badger and first appeared in Dec. 29 editions of the Orlando Sentinel.
Through everything that has happened this season – the injuries, the inexperience, the inconsistency – Iowa’s defense has been the team’s bedrock.
Ranked 10th in the nation in total defense and sixth in rushing defense, the unit has done everything it could to shoulder the Hawkeyes through this season, short of lining up both ways.
But even on that side of the ball, with four seniors in the front four and one of the nation’s best middle linebackers, there have been unimaginable complications. And that’s about how things have gone all year for Iowa.
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UI Coach Kirk Ferentz, an offensive line specialist, has been thankful this year for the luxury of not having to worry about his defense. They ran on autopilot even without their coordinator, and at times after his return, the players did as much to prop up their coach as he did to lead them.
Ferentz, meanwhile, was tailoring his offensive around a first-year starting quarterback, a rebuilt offensive line and a tailback corps that sustained four season-ending torn knee ligaments. “We knew coming into the season that we’d have to lean hard on them,” Ferentz said of the defense. |
Defensive coordinator Norm Parker was sitting in a golf cart Tuesday after practice for the Capital One Bowl, with his left leg propped up, thinking back on the season. Asked how he felt, at that moment and at the end of a long regular season, he offered a typical one-liner meant more for comic relief than a dramatic one.
“Well, I’m alive,” he said.
In March, his 33-year-old son Jeff, died. Then Parker missed the first three games of the season to have a toe amputated and to have surgery improving the poor circulation in his legs as a complication of diabetes.
“I get worn down, I get tired. I thought I would get better faster, but it didn’t work that way,” he said. “It’s been a little bit distracting. The thing with my son, that took a lot out of me. I not only lost him, but he was my best buddy, and that hurt.”
Parker’s veteran defense, Iowa’s strongest link entering the first weeks of the season without him. There was that ugly outing in the third game of the season at Arizona State, where the Hawekyes gave up more than 500 yards (an aberration that makes there defensive averages all the more impressive). But once Parker returned, Iowa won its last seven games – a coincidence not lost on any of his players.
“He our good-luck charm right now,” defensive tackle Jonathan Babineaux said. “Norm is such a hard-working guy. Sometimes I pass by his office midday that the film might be on, but he’s sleeping because he’d be in there so long.”
Babineaux is one of four seniors on Iowa’s front line. He and ends Matt Roth and Derreck Robinson have been lettermen together for the past three seasons and were joined in the line-up and the end of last fall by junior-college transfer Tyler Luebke.
With all-Big Ten middle linebacker Abdul Hodge standing next to him, Roth joked about the source of Iowa’s defensive prowess this year.
“It’s the front four!” he said, laughing because, at the end of a season like this one, you’re entitled to crack whatever jokes you want when you win a share of the Big Ten title.
In all seriousness, Babineaux and Roth were tied for the Big Ten lead in sacks this season with eight. And, along with Robinson and Luebke, they will form one of Saturday’s more interesting subplots against LSU’s touted offensive line.
“I can’t even think of any four that came before us that were all seniors and dominated the game like we did,” Babineaux said. “I really think we turned heads this year.”
UI Coach Kirk Ferentz, an offensive line specialist, has been thankful this year for the luxury of not having to worry about his defense. They ran on autopilot even without their coordinator, and at times after his return, the players did as much to prop up their coach as he did to lead them.
Ferentz, meanwhile, was tailoring his offensive around a first-year starting quarterback, a rebuilt offensive line and a tailback corps that sustained four season-ending torn knee ligaments.
“We knew coming into the season that we’d have to lean hard on them,” Ferentz said of the defense.
And partly because the group stood so strong against the pressure, Parker has been named a finalist for the Frank Broyles Award, given annually to the top college assistant. He plans on being in Little Rock, Ark., next month when the winner will be officially announced. He has been as much embarrassed as honored by the announcement, so he delivers another disarming quip.
“I’ve probably got a better chance of being Miss America,” he said.