Playing the Long Game: Kirk Ferentz's Enduring Impact

By WAYNE DREHS

On an unseasonably warm December night in 1998, on the cement tarmac of the Eastern Iowa Airport, the white door of a private jet unfolded to unveil a 43-year-old man carrying a brown leather briefcase and the weight of a Big Ten university on his shoulders. He wore black slacks, a white button-up dress shirt, and a black and gold tie.

He wasn’t expected to be there. Eleven days earlier, 69-year-old Hayden Fry, Iowa’s all-time winningest coach, retired amid a quiet battle with prostate cancer. While Iowa fans fixated on other candidates—including former Hawkeye Bob Stoops (83BBA), who was quickly snatched up by Oklahoma—a steady leader emerged.

Kirk Ferentz was the assistant head coach of the Baltimore Ravens and a Fry pupil during an eight-year stint in Iowa City coaching the offensive line. His preparation, professionalism, and thoughtfulness wowed the search committee during an interview at a hotel near Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport.

A day later, with his wife and young children by his side, Ferentz deboarded the plane prepared to write the next chapter of Iowa football. No one could have imagined what would happen next.

“Did I know at the time we hit a home run?” asks former Iowa athletic director Bob Bowlsby today. “That he would be at Iowa for 27 years? Hell no. And anybody who tells you otherwise is an abject liar.”

But even in Ferentz’s first hours on the job, Bowlsby found a coach who truly cared. Less than an hour after his plane landed, Ferentz addressed the Iowa team for the first time. His eyes filled with tears as he spoke.

“I remember standing there thinking, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re going to get every last ounce of effort out of this man,’” says Bowlsby. “You could sense the integrity. The work ethic. You could feel how much he cares. And that’s the way he has been all these years.”

Twenty-seven years, to be exact. Seven more than Fry—and counting. At age 70, Ferentz is the longest-tenured head coach in the country, and it’s been that way for nearly a decade. Sixty-nine coaches have been hired in the Big Ten during his Iowa tenure. He even outlasted the Sheraton Hotel in Cleveland where he impressed in his interview. That structure was torn down last fall.

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