Ferentz years best in Iowa History? You be the judge

HawkPrdatr40

HawkPrdatr40

Well-Known Member
Kirk Ferentz and Hayden Fry Comparing there first 14 years.

To make it fair I threw out there first 2 years.

Hayden Fry 12 years (1981-1992)
Record: (96-45)
Big Ten Championships (3) Note: 1985 we won Outright
Season with fewer than 4 losses: (10)
Season with more than 5 losses: (2)
Bowl Games: (10) Note: 8 in a row.
Major Bowls: (3 Rose Bowls)
Finished Season Ranked: (8)

No bad non-conference losses IMO..

Notable non-conference teams Iowa played and faced: (Nebraska x2, UCLA, Penn State x2 (1983/1984), Tennessee, U of Miami x2, Arizona x2, Oregon and 1992-Colorado) Note: Penn State joined BT in 1990.. Quite an impressive list..



Kirk Ferentz 12 years (2001 to present day)
Record: (96-51)
Big Ten Championships: (2)
Season with fewer than 4 losses: (5)
Season with more than 5 losses: (5)
Bowl Games: (10)
Major Bowls (2 Orange Bowls)
Finished Season Ranked: (5)

Bad Non-Conference losses- (Western Michigan/Central Michigan)
Notable Non-Conference teams Iowa scheduled and has faced: Arizona State x2, Syracuse x2, Pittsburg x2, Arizona x2)




Hayden was and still is the man in my book.. Sure I know things have changed but Hayden still wins this debate.. I tell you what really jumped out at me is Hayden's non-conference schedule those first years he was at Iowa and then those in the early 90"s. He wasn't afraid to play anyone during his first 14 years..
 
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Hayden had a 'bad' non-con loss or tie to Hawaii to start of 1988. That and 1997 were like Ferentz's 2005 and 2010. They're very similar, but one reason I've always argued Hayden's side is that Iowa scarcely played I-AA/FCS teams in Hayden's tenure. Drake in 1985 and UNI in 1995 is all I can think of off the top of my head. In twelve-game regular seasons under Ferentz in your timeframe, Iowa has played I-AA/FCS teams every time except 2007.

2001: 11-game reg. season
2002: Played all I-A opposition
2003: Played all I-A opposition
2004: 11-game reg. season
2005: 11-game reg. season, played UNI nonetheless
2006: Montana
2007: Played all I-A opposition
2008: Maine
2009: UNI
2010: Eastern Illinois
2011: Tennessee Tech
2012: UNI

So go ahead and tack four more wins on for Hayden (six FCS wins for Kirk minus Hayden's two), and that leaves them with a more equal number of games and records of 100-45 and 96-51. Still very close, but I'd like to see the conference records as well.

Also, tip of the cap to Evy and Howard Jones. I know this isn't a best-of-all-time post, but why not remember ALL the good times right now? haha
 
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The Evashevski years were the best in Iowa history. Two Rose Bowl wins, a National Championship, multiple Top-10 rankings.
 


Cover3 said:
Hayden had a 'bad' non-con loss or tie to Hawaii to start of 1988. That and 1997 were like Ferentz's 2005 and 2010. They're very similar, but one reason I've always argued Hayden's side is that Iowa scarcely played I-AA/FCS teams in Hayden's tenure. Drake in 1985 and UNI in 1995 is all I can think of off the top of my head. In twelve-game regular seasons under Ferentz in your timeframe, Iowa has played I-AA/FCS teams every time except 2007.

2001: 11-game reg. season
2002: Played all I-A opposition
2003: Played all I-A opposition
2004: 11-game reg. season
2005: 11-game reg. season, played UNI nonetheless
2006: Montana
2007: Played all I-A opposition
2008: Maine
2009: UNI
2010: Eastern Illinois
2011: Tennessee Tech
2012: UNI

So go ahead and tack four more wins on for Hayden (six FCS wins for Kirk minus Hayden's two), and that leaves them with a more equal number of games and records of 100-45 and 96-51. Still very close, but I'd like to see the conference records as well.

Also, tip of the cap to Evy and Howard Jones. I know this isn't a best-of-all-time post, but why not remember ALL the good times right now? haha
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seems like that's exactly what his post is. "ferentz years BEST IN IOWA HISTORY?" would tell me its a best-of-all-time post
 


Big difference between Hayden and KF is KF approaches every game the same regardless of the opponent while Hayden put a great deal of emphasis on beating the teams we were supposed to win. When Hayden's teams played Iowa State or Northwestern, he did not just want to beat them he wanted to destroy them and his team played like that.
 


I have to go with the OP on this one - it's close but a bit of an edge to Hayden IMO. Just looking at the stats, Hayden has the edge in pretty much every category.

The two coaches are tied in bowl appearances, but Hayden did it in an era where you didn't have the 7th place team in the conference getting a bowl game. KF has had some excellent bowl games too, but some of his teams would not have gone to bowl games if it had been the 1980's. His 2006 team went 2-6 in conference and still went to the Alamo Bowl...
 


1977Hawkeye said:
I have to go with the OP on this one - it's close but a bit of an edge to Hayden IMO. Just looking at the stats, Hayden has the edge in pretty much every category.

The two coaches are tied in bowl appearances, but Hayden did it in an era where you didn't have the 7th place team in the conference getting a bowl game. KF has had some excellent bowl games too, but some of his teams would not have gone to bowl games if it had been the 1980's. His 2006 team went 2-6 in conference and still went to the Alamo Bowl...
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Not many bowls were passing up on a bowl eligible Hawkeye team during the Hayden years. If you remember a 6 win Hayden led team played in the Alamo bowl in 1993 (they really sucked that year) and in 1988 the Peach Bowl took Iowa with a 6-3-3 record.
 


ssckelley said:
Not many bowls were passing up on a bowl eligible Hawkeye team during the Hayden years. If you remember a 6 win Hayden led team played in the Alamo bowl in 1993 (they really sucked that year) and in 1988 the Peach Bowl took Iowa with a 6-3-3 record.
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Maybe so, but I still say 10 bowls in the 1980's is more impressive than 10 Bowls in the 2000's..

Hayden's 1991 team went 10-1, was ranked #7, and went to the Holiday Bowl. These days, that would get you a BCS game, most likely.
 










ummm...just looked again. hayden's years are listed from 81-92. either its a typo or OP is picking and choosing what stats he wants to use. also, did iowa not play football before 1981?
 


He also left out some Ferentz years. He seemed to want to equalize the number of years between the two. He also excluded the first few years of each as rebuilding or program building years which weren't refective of the body of work. Seems fair.
 




To me, the Hayden years will always be better than the Kurt years unless something drastic changes. But it's really difficult to compare them because so much has changed. Penn State definitely upped the talent level in the conference and Hayden didn't have to deal with that in the '80's. Nebraska will also shift the landscape going forward. As will the title game. Getting to the Rose Bowl is a lot harder now and I don't think Kurt ever will get there. Plus, Wisconsin has turned into a darn good program and Hayden didn't have to deal with them being good until the mid-90's. But when push came to shove, you could count on Hayden to generally beat up on ISU and Northwestern and save for a few cases toward the end and the Tulsa game, beat the teams a program like Iowa should beat. I think part of what has happened is that while Iowa has set its sights on beating the Michigans, PSUs and OSUs of the conference (with mixed success, at least with respect to OSU), teams like ISU and Northwestern set their sights lower and figured if they can beat Iowa, their programs will get better at our expense. And they have done just that.

Where I think the biggest differences between Kurt and Hayden come in though is that Hayden was actually a pretty innovative coach (other than toward the end of his career) while Ferentz is much more vanilla, focus on fundamentals, keep games close, etc. Kurt's style was fine when the Big Ten had similar coaches at the bigger programs (JoePa, Lloyd Carr, Tressel) but I am a little worried now that it is becoming a dinosaur. When we had relatively comparable or superior talent, it worked fine and even gave us chances to beat the bigger programs because the games could ultimately come down to a single mistake late in the game or a defensive stand to close out games. But the problem is that unless we have ALL of the pieces at once, it is a bad system because it does nothing exceptional to make up for talent deficiencies and it is prone to failure against significantly less talented teams.
 




bcl20 said:
Iowa State and Northwestern are better programs than when Hayden was there.
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Agreed. And both have actively placed Iowa in their cross hairs. Reasonable Northwestern fans do not expect to compete with Michigan or OSU. But they expect to compete with Iowa. And I don't think most reasonable ISU fans think beating Texas and Oklahoma is reasonable to expect, but they do expect to beat Iowa now.
 


HawkPrdatr40 said:
To make it fair I threw out there first 2 years.

Hayden Fry 12 years (1981-1992)
Record: (96-45)
Big Ten Championships (3) Note: 1985 we won Outright
Season with fewer than 4 losses: (10)
Season with more than 5 losses: (2)
Bowl Games: (10) Note: 8 in a row.
Major Bowls: (3 Rose Bowls)
Finished Season Ranked: (8)

No bad non-conference losses IMO..

Notable non-conference teams Iowa played and faced: (Nebraska x2, UCLA, Penn State x2 (1983/1984), Tennessee, U of Miami x2, Arizona x2, Oregon and 1992-Colorado) Note: Penn State joined BT in 1990.. Quite an impressive list..



Kirk Ferentz 12 years (2001 to present day)
Record: (96-51)
Big Ten Championships: (2)
Season with fewer than 4 losses: (5)
Season with more than 5 losses: (5)
Bowl Games: (10)
Major Bowls (2 Orange Bowls)
Finished Season Ranked: (5)

Bad Non-Conference losses- (Western Michigan/Central Michigan)
Notable Non-Conference teams Iowa scheduled and has faced: Arizona State x2, Syracuse x2, Pittsburg x2, Arizona x2)




Hayden was and still is the man in my book.. Sure I know things have changed but Hayden still wins this debate.. I tell you what really jumped out at me is Hayden's non-conference schedule those first years he was at Iowa and then those in the early 90"s. He wasn't afraid to play anyone during his first 14 years..
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To echo many in here, this post is the epitome of laziness. The true answer is:

Forest Evashevski 9 years (1952-1960)
Record: 52-27-4
Big Ten Championships: 3
National Championships: 1
Seasons with fewer than 4 losses: 4
Seasons with more than 5 losses: 1
Rose Bowl Wins: 2
Finished season ranked: 5
Top 5 finishes: 4
 


I don't like counting Iowa as having won a national championship but I, too, agree that Forest was our best coach.

But to be honest, how many on here were alive to care. I wasn't alive for Fry's good years so it's not hard for myself, to be biased towards Ferentz's good years.
 


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