To me, this is the number one reason why I hate most comparisons between Ferentz and Fry. While I think Ferentz deserves plenty of criticism for some of his choices in games against lesser opponents, Fry's lesser opponents were a lot "lesser" than Ferentz'. Conversely, the elite teams in Fry's era were generally more superior to Iowa compared to Ferentz's era.
It drives me crazy when fans talk about Hayden blowing away the bad teams. Yes, he did that with great regularity, but a lot of that is due to the quality of those opponents. FCS teams are much better today than they were during Fry's era. ISU and Northwestern used to be horrible. Take a look at some of the scores from yesterday. Eastern Washington put up 42 points and over 500 yards on Oregon yesterday, last year's runner-up. Many of us thought Iowa could lose to ISU yesterday. That sort of thing was unthinkable during Fry's era.
Fry was great, but Fry also went into halftime in 1995 down 56-7 to Ohio State. That hasn't happened under Ferentz. I realize '95 is after the scholarship limit was reduced, but I think there has been a massive change in talent distribution in college football since then.
