Get Prepared for some Tough Times

[kicker22]

Rankings only matter at the end of the year.
In 2021, PSU was ranked #4 early in the season. They finished 7-6 and not in the Top 25.
2021 Indiana was even worse. Ranked 17 when we played them in the first game, they finished 2-10, 0-9 in the B10. Last place.
2021 ISU was ranked 9 when we played them in the second game. They finished 7-6.
Not Top 25 by a long shot.
Covid 2020 Illinois finished 2-6. Wisconsin 4-3.

You consider these Top 25 wins?

My only argument with the ratings only matter at the end of the year mentality is every time you beat a ranked team during the season there is that much greater chance that that same team doesn't end up ranked.

While I agree that they are often times over rated and the polls find themselves weeding them out quite often there's also the other side of the argument that at the point in which we played them they were some of the hottest teams in the country and playing as well as anyone else despite how they ended up.

I think the rankings argument needs to come with an asterisk, because if only the end of the season rankings hold any meaning then you're only looking at half the picture. I agree with you that I don't necessarily consider those being top 25 wins, but at the same time I have a hard time saying they don't count simply because while being ranked at the time the game was played they didn't stay there.

 

[kicker22]

I hope you're wrong about that. I hope they can continue to win 8-10 games per year. Of course familiarity breeds contempt.

I have a cynical take that says Kirk neglected the offense for over a decade. Not in a malicous way but because it is a blind spot. He just didn't have high enough expectations and thus didn't press for more. I'll be he learned a lot after Lester started talking about X and Os with him.

I agree but don't know if I'd say neglected. I think the issue is with the emphasis he puts on defense and special teams and his style of offense whether neglegent or not his priorities came back to bite him in the ass in terms of recruiting, because they definitely don't match.

 

[InGoodCo]

My only argument with the ratings only matter at the end of the year mentality is every time you beat a ranked team during the season there is that much greater chance that that same team doesn't end up ranked.

While I agree that they are often times over rated and the polls find themselves weeding them out quite often there's also the other side of the argument that at the point in which we played them they were some of the hottest teams in the country and playing as well as anyone else despite how they ended up.

I think the rankings argument needs to come with an asterisk, because if only the end of the season rankings hold any meaning then you're only looking at half the picture. I agree with you that I don't necessarily consider those being top 25 wins, but at the same time I have a hard time saying they don't count simply because while being ranked at the time the game was played they didn't stay there.

I’ve been saying exactly that for 2 days now lol.

 

[InGoodCo]

I agree but don't know if I'd say neglected. I think the issue is with the emphasis he puts on defense and special teams and his style of offense whether neglegent or not his priorities came back to bite him in the ass in terms of recruiting, because they definitely don't match.

He also built his team to win the B1G West every year. He got pretty good at that towards the end right? I can’t blame him for a winning strategy. The landscape has changed and I’m not confident Kirk’s the guy to lead us where we go next. I’m a KF and BF fan and I believe these are truely the “good ole days” so to speak for our program. I hope Kirk can figure that out just like he figured out how to beat almost every team on our schedule every fucking year towards the end. Good coach but the overhaul our team needs to compete is glaring. Not sure that’s something anyone could fix

 

[oldhawk12]

I wonder if Beth is operating with a strong presumption that SW will succeed Kirk - that continuity is key

If you don’t want the program to go back, that’s not the move that’s made. The fact this is even discussed is unreal

 

[oldhawk12]

Seriously?
You believe the current state of the Iowa program is because Brian is NOT there?

Ironic isn’t it? In reality, it’s because Kirk still is

 

[trj]

If you don’t want the program to go back, that’s not the move that’s made. The fact this is even discussed is unreal

Ironic isn’t it? In reality, it’s because Kirk still is

You going to have an original thought or you just going to continue to troll?

 

[dahlhawk]

Next year will be a major rebuild, if we had anything in the underclassmen tank, they would be seeing playing time. Strength of schedule goes from a 4 to a 10 next year and we are losing almost all our starters. YET, Kirk doesn't see this season as a rebuilding year, even though we are out of the playoff and conference championship contention. Keeping Cade as our starter, with a healthy Sullivan on the team who is probable next year's starter is unacceptable. Next year will take an active and exhaustive search of the portal to just find back-ups for untested players, and oh yes, a lot of programs want payback for the last several years. I hope we win the rest of our games but honestly I expect to lose 2 more if Cade stays the starter. Kirk's time is over. This feels exactly like Fry's last year. A bowl game now with both teams having the best players sit out doesn't do anything for me anymore. If Kirk does the right thing and retires, we have several options of good H/C who can fill in quickly and bring talent with them. Maybe even lure a retired NC coach out of retirement 25 years after Iowa fans thought he would would be the no-brain hire. I'd take Bret, Campbell, Mark, or even an untraditional coach at this point. I just have severe KDS right now and after following the greatness that was Caitlin Clark and the Iowa women's team would love to follow a team and coach in football feel they can do the same. Sometimes things need to change BEFORE they bottom out, but alas I think that time has passed. Now I expect to be called a horrible fan and whatever, but I have been living and breathing Hawkeyes since 1981, I expect the highs and lows of sport and I know we win more than we lose, but there just isn't any joy in it for me anymore.

 

[BigD]

Next year will be a major rebuild, if we had anything in the underclassmen tank, they would be seeing playing time. Strength of schedule goes from a 4 to a 10 next year and we are losing almost all our starters. YET, Kirk doesn't see this season as a rebuilding year, even though we are out of the playoff and conference championship contention. Keeping Cade as our starter, with a healthy Sullivan on the team who is probable next year's starter is unacceptable. Next year will take an active and exhaustive search of the portal to just find back-ups for untested players, and oh yes, a lot of programs want payback for the last several years. I hope we win the rest of our games but honestly I expect to lose 2 more if Cade stays the starter. Kirk's time is over. This feels exactly like Fry's last year. A bowl game now with both teams having the best players sit out doesn't do anything for me anymore. If Kirk does the right thing and retires, we have several options of good H/C who can fill in quickly and bring talent with them. Maybe even lure a retired NC coach out of retirement 25 years after Iowa fans thought he would would be the no-brain hire. I'd take Bret, Campbell, Mark, or even an untraditional coach at this point. I just have severe KDS right now and after following the greatness that was Caitlin Clark and the Iowa women's team would love to follow a team and coach in football feel they can do the same. Sometimes things need to change BEFORE they bottom out, but alas I think that time has passed. Now I expect to be called a horrible fan and whatever, but I have been living and breathing Hawkeyes since 1981, I expect the highs and lows of sport and I know we win more than we lose, but there just isn't any joy in it for me anymore.

Agreed

1967 for me. Those early years were rough. Fans in Kinnick going to watch the band play at halftime and then a majority of the fans leaving after that.

Gotta love some people (Fryowa) types challenging someone as a fan when he has only watched Hayden and Kirk ball who has no idea how much we suffered before that. Ignorance is bliss.

InGoodCompany I don’t agree with some of your opinions, but others I do agree with. You have changed in some ways by the realization that it is time for a change if Iowa is going to move the football program forward.

I also agree that maybe it won’t ever happen, but it’s for damn sure it’s not going to happen under the current regime. Hats off for the consistency that we had under Kirk and Hayden but it’s time for a change come hell or high water.

Just because I want change doesn’t make me less of a fan. I believe it makes me more of a fan, because I believe we can always do better. Which is being more of a fan? The person who believes we can do better or the person who believes we can’t and so we should never change?

Think about that for awhile.

 

[InGoodCo]

Next year will be a major rebuild, if we had anything in the underclassmen tank, they would be seeing playing time. Strength of schedule goes from a 4 to a 10 next year and we are losing almost all our starters. YET, Kirk doesn't see this season as a rebuilding year, even though we are out of the playoff and conference championship contention. Keeping Cade as our starter, with a healthy Sullivan on the team who is probable next year's starter is unacceptable. Next year will take an active and exhaustive search of the portal to just find back-ups for untested players, and oh yes, a lot of programs want payback for the last several years. I hope we win the rest of our games but honestly I expect to lose 2 more if Cade stays the starter. Kirk's time is over. This feels exactly like Fry's last year. A bowl game now with both teams having the best players sit out doesn't do anything for me anymore. If Kirk does the right thing and retires, we have several options of good H/C who can fill in quickly and bring talent with them. Maybe even lure a retired NC coach out of retirement 25 years after Iowa fans thought he would would be the no-brain hire. I'd take Bret, Campbell, Mark, or even an untraditional coach at this point. I just have severe KDS right now and after following the greatness that was Caitlin Clark and the Iowa women's team would love to follow a team and coach in football feel they can do the same. Sometimes things need to change BEFORE they bottom out, but alas I think that time has passed. Now I expect to be called a horrible fan and whatever, but I have been living and breathing Hawkeyes since 1981, I expect the highs and lows of sport and I know we win more than we lose, but there just isn't any joy in it for me anymore.

Kirk isn't wired that way and IMO, I have no problem with that. Kirk wants to win as many games as he can THIS year. Heck, he doesn't even care about the game in 2 weeks, he's only focused on the next game... so to pine for him to think about next year and the year after that... he's just not wired that way. IMO, that's part of what has made him great and why his teams are resilient and often times bounce back ...because all that matters is NOW.

 

[Will C]

Sticking with QB's that are not getting the job done when you could be building next year's QB is just stupid. Give number two a game and see. If that doesn't work give number three a game.

 

[Westernhawk]

Next year will be a major rebuild, if we had anything in the underclassmen tank, they would be seeing playing time. Strength of schedule goes from a 4 to a 10 next year and we are losing almost all our starters. YET, Kirk doesn't see this season as a rebuilding year, even though we are out of the playoff and conference championship contention. Keeping Cade as our starter, with a healthy Sullivan on the team who is probable next year's starter is unacceptable. Next year will take an active and exhaustive search of the portal to just find back-ups for untested players, and oh yes, a lot of programs want payback for the last several years. I hope we win the rest of our games but honestly I expect to lose 2 more if Cade stays the starter. Kirk's time is over. This feels exactly like Fry's last year. A bowl game now with both teams having the best players sit out doesn't do anything for me anymore. If Kirk does the right thing and retires, we have several options of good H/C who can fill in quickly and bring talent with them. Maybe even lure a retired NC coach out of retirement 25 years after Iowa fans thought he would would be the no-brain hire. I'd take Bret, Campbell, Mark, or even an untraditional coach at this point. I just have severe KDS right now and after following the greatness that was Caitlin Clark and the Iowa women's team would love to follow a team and coach in football feel they can do the same. Sometimes things need to change BEFORE they bottom out, but alas I think that time has passed. Now I expect to be called a horrible fan and whatever, but I have been living and breathing Hawkeyes since 1981, I expect the highs and lows of sport and I know we win more than we lose, but there just isn't any joy in it for me anymore.

Good points, but why would Bret, Campbell, or Mark come to Iowa? Bret, for example, is a great coach who is currently at the helm of a program on the rise (I think). If Illinois can recruit Chicago well, take players from Wisconsin, etc., he could do pretty well at Illinois for quite a while.

With limited NIL funds, a reputation for a horrid offense, a low population state, and a fanbase with high expectations... why would a currently successful D1 coach come to Iowa? People wanted heads to roll when Iowa won 10 games last year.

Sadly (and I've been a hawkeye my whole life and have seen games in kinnick for decades), I think the next step for Iowa football will be down for many reasons. I would LOVE to be wrong.

Having said that, I'm ready to move on. KF, it's been great, but it's time.

 

[Fryowa]

Rankings only matter at the end of the year.
In 2021, PSU was ranked #4 early in the season. They finished 7-6 and not in the Top 25.
2021 Indiana was even worse. Ranked 17 when we played them in the first game, they finished 2-10, 0-9 in the B10. Last place.
2021 ISU was ranked 9 when we played them in the second game. They finished 7-6.
Not Top 25 by a long shot.
Covid 2020 Illinois finished 2-6. Wisconsin 4-3.

You consider these Top 25 wins?

My only argument with the ratings only matter at the end of the year mentality is every time you beat a ranked team during the season there is that much greater chance that that same team doesn't end up ranked.

While I agree that they are often times over rated and the polls find themselves weeding them out quite often there's also the other side of the argument that at the point in which we played them they were some of the hottest teams in the country and playing as well as anyone else despite how they ended up.

I think the rankings argument needs to come with an asterisk, because if only the end of the season rankings hold any meaning then you're only looking at half the picture. I agree with you that I don't necessarily consider those being top 25 wins, but at the same time I have a hard time saying they don't count simply because while being ranked at the time the game was played they didn't stay there.

I’ve been saying exactly that for 2 days now lol.

Any ranking not based on consistent, actual criteria means exactly diddly shit at the beginning of the year, in the middle of the year, or at the end of the year. Even if you ranked teams 1-25 according to how on-time their flights are throughout the season it would be more valid than the coaches or AP polls. They're total, complete bullshit. The coaches poll is voted on by low-level grad assistants because actual coaches with knowledge and jobs that matter have 58 better things to do, and the AP poll is voted on by sports writers who don't really know what they're looking at when it comes to the true things that matter in the technicalities of football. Even if they did, they're still extremely biased popularity contests. You mean to tell me that Kirby Smart's grad assistant kid in charge of game film knows what makes the 17th best team in America better than the 18th team in America? GTFO.

RPI systems, and rankings based on formulaic criteria with zero human interaction are the only actual ways to rank teams against each other and even those are very imperfect due to small sample sizes, lack of extensive crossover (Alabama and OSU don't play each other or share common opponents), and the fact that humans created the ranking criteria in the first place.

But...

Even though formulaic systems have the flaws I mentioned above, they are at least based on statistics and applied to every single team equally. You can't argue against actual statistical results with no human intervention when applied equally.

You want the best way to rank college football teams? Go to the Massey composite site (google it), remove any voting or human-ranked polls from it, and then average the remaining ones. Or, you could take Sagarin because he's by far the most rigorous poll out there when it comes to predictive wins/losses over time and it's not based on any human intervention other than setting the criteria.

tldr; the AP poll, Coaches Poll, and the CFP ranking committee polls are total, complete, unadulterated bullshit and mean nothing. The Sagarin rank is the absolute best we have, and even it is meaningless until the last few weeks of a season which he happily admits. Anyone who's taken a high school-level stats class knows (or should know) that a sample size of 30 is the minimum widely accepted as valid, and that would be only if all teams played each other multiple times on neutral fields. A sample of 11 games in a season of 130 different teams isn't even remotely close.

 

[rschneider]

We've endured the last 14 years. I think most could handle what's next.

 

[Westernhawk]

We've endured the last 14 years. I think most could handle what's next.

So going from 8,9,10 wins to 5 or 6 is aok with you? Could happen... I should note that I'm also ready to move on, but prepared for a lot fewer wins.

 

[InGoodCo]

We've endured the last 14 years. I think most could handle what's next.

jfc you guys are dumb.... this stretch, this tenure, this coaching staff, these last 15 years or so, is likely going to go down as some of the best times Iowa has ever walked onto a football field as far as winning. KF is the GOAT and soon to be gone. Most really won't be able to handle being Nebraska for the next decade, count on it.

 

[InGoodCo]

In the last 14 years, Iowa has won 65% of their games, only had one losing season, it's only undefeated 12-0 regular season in school history .... anyone who's looking at the current landscape of CFB and thinks Iowa is going to be trending towards better than that are in for a pretty harsh reality. I get that "fan" is short for fanatic, but seriously, it's going to be so much worse for Iowa football going forward. We will sit back and talk about the great fucking Iowa teams and how we can get back to the winning ways the Ferentz's did, I almost feel like 90% confident of that. Iowa has no business being as good or consistent at football.

I could be wrong, I won't be, but I could be, so, there's that. I just really wouldn't bank on it.

 

[Westernhawk]

In the last 14 years, Iowa has won 65% of their games, only had one losing season, it's only undefeated 12-0 regular season in school history .... anyone who's looking at the current landscape of CFB and thinks Iowa is going to be trending towards better than that are in for a pretty harsh reality. I get that "fan" is short for fanatic, but seriously, it's going to be so much worse for Iowa football going forward. We will sit back and talk about the great fucking Iowa teams and how we can get back to the winning ways the Ferentz's did, I almost feel like 90% confident of that. Iowa has no business being as good or consistent at football.

I could be wrong, I won't be, but I could be, so, there's that. I just really wouldn't bank on it.

I'm already feeling fairly disgusted about what has happened to "college" sports, so my transition to being a casual fan has already started.

I'm in my 50s, and have been going to games in Kinnick since I was about 6 years old. My early memories were Bob Commings. Good times. I gave up my season tickets (really a difficult choice) and only went to one game this year (Washington, which was a fortunate choice).

We have been so spoiled to see the consistent level of high performance over the last 40 plus years!! Our fans bitch like crazy when we end up with 8 or 9 wins and end up ranked #23. I agree that we'll look back on that and miss it.

With the changing landscape (NIL, conference re-alignment, and the fact that Iowa has the same population as it had 100 years ago), I predict that it will be extremely difficult for Iowa to achieve sustained success going forward. We are used to sustained success.

This will be a really hard time for those who lost their sh!t after Iowa won ten games last year (for example).

I hope I'm wrong. I really do. I do think KF needs to retire, and after he leaves, it seems likely that we'll see less success on the gridiron. I hope my friends in Iowa find something interesting to do in the fall besides relying on football.