How would we view Fry in the internet-era?

C

CP87

Well-Known Member
I admit up-front that my definition of "bad losses" is a bit flawed because it is based entirely on the teams end-of-season records, but ultimately that is a reasonable metric of the quality of a team.

Hayden Fry coached 20 seasons:

  • he had 5 that ended with 3 or fewer losses (25% of seasons)
  • his average record was 7.15 wins, 4.45 losses, and 0.3 ties.
  • His average Big Ten record was 4.9 wins, 3.05 losses, and 0.25 ties.
  • 4 losing big ten records (20% of seasons). Amazing how he hit the ground running and started winning Big Ten games right away.
  • His bowl record was 6-7-1.
  • Ignoring his first couple of years, he had the following losses that the typical "message board fan" would say he should have won (i.e., teams that finished with worse records than the Hawks)
    • '81: Iowa State, Minnesota, Illinois (Hawks lost 28-0 in Bowl game vs. Washington)
    • '82: Iowa State, Purdue
    • '83: really no bad losses, but lost to conference leading Illinois 33-0
    • '84: Michigan State, Minnesota
    • '85: hard to call the loss to Ohio State a bad loss, but Iowa was the higher ranked team and OSU finished 5-3 in the Big Ten. Iowa lost by 17 in their Bowl game vs. UCLA.
    • '86: Illinois
    • '87: Really no bad losses, although Michigan ended with a worse record than Iowa
    • '88: Hawaii (on the road at Hawaii, hard to call that a bad loss), Ohio State tie (OSU was below 0.500 that year)
    • '89: only 5-6 this year, but the only loss that they "should" have won is Minnesota
    • '90: only bad loss is to Minnesota
    • '91: really no bad losses
    • '92: 5-7 against a brutal schedule, only bad loss is season ending 15 point loss to 2-9 Minnesota team.
    • '93: 6-6 record, including 5 game losing streak. Only questionable losses would be Illinois and Mich St., both of which ended up with similar records to Iowa
    • '94: 5-5-1 record, bad loss to Indiana, bad tie to Purdue
    • '95: Illinois. Fans probably would have counted the loss to perennial doormat NW a bad loss, but that was the year NW went undefeated in conference.
    • '96: Tulsa, 27 point loss to Northwestern
    • I will also ignore his last couple of seasons, which were atypical

Kirk Ferentz has completed 13 seasons:

  • he has had 4 that ended with 3 or fewer losses (31% of seasons).
  • His average record: 7.38 wins, 4.92 losses.
  • His average Big Ten record: 4.38 wins, 3.54 losses.
  • 3 Big Ten losing records (23% of seasons), but only 1 in 11 season since his first two.
  • His bowl record is 6-3.
  • Ignoring his first couple of seasons, he has had the following "bad losses"
    • '01: Purdue, Mich St, Wisconsin
    • '02: Iowa State (lost to USC in Bowl by 21 points)
    • '03: Michigan State
    • '04: No bad losses
    • '05: fans would call ISU and NW losses bad, but they both finished with same record as Hawks
    • '06: 6-7 record, bad loss to NW, would probably consider the Minn loss bad though Gophers had a better record than Hawks
    • '07: 6-6, bad losses to Indiana, Purdue, and Western Michigan
    • '08: Illinois; also lost close ones to NW and MSU, both of which were good teams that year with equal or better records to Iowa
    • '09: NW, due largely to Stanzi injury
    • '10: NW and Minnesota are the only bad losses. Although losses to Big Ten champ and runner-up Wisconsion and Ohio State were tough to stomach, they were both clearly very good teams
    • '11: Minnesota. Fans would love to call ISU loss a bad one, but the two teams are fairly equal this year and it was an early road game
Under Fry, Iowa had multiple bad losses in '81. '82, '84, '88, '94, '96, maybe a few others depending upon how picky you want to be. He maybe had 4-5 without any bad losses, but several of those years the Hawks had losing records.



Under Ferentz, Iowa had multiple bad losses in '01, '07, and '10, maybe '11. Most of the bad losses were close. He had 2 or 3 seasons with no bad losses, depending upon how you want to consider the '05 losses and the '09 Stanzi-less NW loss.



I think both Coach Fry and Coach Ferentz were/are great coaches. However, both of them occasionally lost games that fans would argue they shouldn't. The Ferentz Hawks tend to keep their losses closer, which many fans find more frustrating.


I imagine if Fry had coached in the internet-age the people would be calling for his removal many seasons as well.



Comparison of Iowa coaches is the most relevant comparison, but we could also look at the whole of college FB each week. Just this past weekend many ranked teams were upset (Clemson, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Oregon, just to name the ones off the top of my head). That is part of the beauty of sports. Anything can happen any given week.



This is what I expect for the teams I cheer for:

  • play hard
  • conduct yourselves appropriately on and off the field
  • put a good product on the field, be competitive week in and week out, and be relevant in the big picture of your sport most years
Iowa has done this both under Fry and under Ferentz. Their administration has recognized this, and has also recognized that consistency is crucial for long-term success. If the administration or the coaches scrambled to change philosophies every time fans called for it, the Hawkeye program would not have had nearly the success that it has had over the past 3 decades.


All that said, Ferentz and his staff have certainly made some questionable in-game decisions during their tenure (as do all staffs). However, it is pretty clear that the positives that they bring to the table from Sunday-Friday outweigh the negatives of occasional questionable game-day decisions. If they continue to flirt with mediocrity for two more years then the administration will rightfully discuss making a change. But for now they will side with consistency, and hopefully they will be rewarded for it as they were in '08 and '09 after many were calling for Ferentz's head after '06 and '07.
 
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Great post.

If this site existed in 1988, when the Hawks went 6-4-3, it would have exploded.

The main edge that Fry has on Ferentz is that he went to three Rose Bowls. Of course, it was a different system then, and it's tough to hold it against KF that we went to the Orange Bowl instead of the Rose Bowl in '02.

The main edge that Ferentz has on Fry is an overall better bowl record (6-3 vs. 6-8). The reason why Fry will always be a legend is because he reanimated a program from the ashes; KF had a bare cupboard but at least there was some recent history of success. I'm absolutely ecstatic that we're getting to what will be without question 2 of the 3 best coaches in the history of the program.

And as an aside, Hayden's press conferences, especially during down seasons, would have people on this board begging for KF's vanilla answers.
 
The other edge that Fry had is he was more likely to blow out a bad team. Then again, Ferentz is more likely to keep a game against a good team close.
 
I kind of already posted this.... You have to remember how horrible Iowa football was before Fry arrived also.

I smirk at some of the way you listed these statistics - using averages is quit misleading.

But overall some good info in here.
 
I would guess that if the Iowa AD kowtowed to the loud, angry minority that are very fast to voice their displeasure, Fry would have been fired in '89. Odds are that '90 (8-4) and '91 (10-1-1) would not have happened.

Had he somehow survived the early swoon, he would have been fired between '92-'94 (a swoon the likes of which Ferentz has not seen). Odds are fairly good that the respectable '95 (8-4) and '96 (9-3) seasons, both ending in bowl wins, would not have happened.

Likewise, Ferentz would have been fired after year two, and 3 consecutive top 10 finishes ('02, '03, and '04) would not have happened.

Even if he had miraculously survived the first two years, he definitely would have been canned between '06 and '07, meaning '08 (9-4, Bowl victory, and just a really fun team to watch) and '09 (11-2, BCS bowl victory) never would have happened.

I suppose you could argue that any other coach could step in and accomplish what coaches Fry and Ferentz have accomplished. Ask Michigan, Notre Dame, Florida, pre-Stoops Oklahoma, pre-Brown Texas, and pre-Saban Alabama if that is the case.
 
Bigtenchamp said:
I kind of already posted this.... You have to remember how horrible Iowa football was before Fry arrived also.

I smirk at some of the way you listed these statistics - using averages is quit misleading.

But overall some good info in here.
Click to expand...

I am certainly not claiming it is a perfect breakdown. I don't know much about Fry-era football because I was growing up in Minnesota cheering for the Vikings at that time. Thus, I got my take on the Fry era from Wikipedia. I agree that the averages don't tell the whole story, but I never implied they did. That was the point of the season-by-season breakdown of each coach. This is still incomplete, but I thought the data was interesting.

Looking back at the numbers of the Fry era objectively, it looks like he did a remarkable job and deserves all of the praise he has gotten. He is also a heck of a salesman, and he has done more to sell the product of Hawkeye FB than anyone.

The only point I am trying to make is that he also had a few stumbles here and there. I am sure he was raked over the coals for a few of these at the time, but I am also sure the backlash would have been worse had anonymous, internet message boards existed.
 
Arguing against myself to boost post-count:

The biggest weakness of the crude analysis presented is that it offers no accounting for how the teams did relative to their talent levels. However, it is difficult to get an objective measure of the team's talent levels.

One could use recruiting rankings, in which case Ferentz would look pretty good because his teams finish much better than the rankings indicate that they should. I am not sure of the talent level on the Fry teams, and not sure if there was such a thing as recruiting rankings back then. The counter-argument could be made that the coaches are responsible for bringing in the talent, so it should not matter how they compare to what they bring in.

One could also use level of NFL talent. However, this is also somewhat flawed because many of the things that Ferentz does that makes his players NFL ready (use pro-style schemes, require lots of thinking from his players instead of letting them be aggressive and instinctive) are also the things that he is criticized for as contributing to losses. He would probably look okay most years by this standard, but clearly in '10 his team vastly underachieved.

Not sure how Fry's teams performed relative to their future NFL talent, perhaps someone more familiar with Fry-era Hawkeyes could comment.
 
I dont know numbers, but it seemed fry put many Hawks in NFL too.

Either way, we have been blessed to have such a stable program under only two, on the whole, excellent coaches. Haydens records may have been way different if his coaching staffs were more cohesive, as he has provided many other programs with similar success, sure to his coaching offspring.

good thread OP, and good stats. What stands out to me are how many "bad" losses we have had vs Minny.
 
CP87 said:
The other edge that Fry had is he was more likely to blow out a bad team. Then again, Ferentz is more likely to keep a game against a good team close.
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urban legend.

+ bad teams of the fry era much different than the 'bad teams' of today - due to scholarship changes. more parity, better overall teams.
 
Fry would have been 'crucified' by the know it all tavern hoks on this board - can you imagine the response after quick kicking on 3rd down, draws on 3rd and long, and yes, throwing out of your own endzone.......

Fry much more conservative than Ferentz in many respects.......
 
imported_ankle23 said:
urban legend.

+ bad teams of the fry era much different than the 'bad teams' of today - due to scholarship changes. more parity, better overall teams.
Click to expand...

Good point. Prior to 1977 schools could offer unlimited scholarships, often times just to keep players away from their competitors.

The number of scholarships was set at 95 from 1977-91; at 92 in 1992; and 88 in 1993. It has been at 85 since 1994.
 
I'm not sure Hayden would've put up with the 'Internet Age'. I think he might have decided to stay "Stuff It" and walked away. It didn't seem like he had a lot of patience for that kind of krap. Or, he may have moved on somewhere else. I know there was a time when USC was trying to woo him out there and I believe he was seriously considering it.

Anyway, interesting to think about.
 
CP - great stuff. Just a couple things to add here.

Someone mentioned the scholarship reductions, and I think that speaks to Ferentz's consistency as well. I recall the bad teams of the '80s as truly horrific, including the Big Ten doormats.

I'm not trying to take anything from Hayden's accomplishments, but once he got Iowa up and running, I think there was more of a "soft middle" in the Big Ten those days. He didn't have to deal with Penn State until his last 5 years or so. Beyond Ohio State and Michigan in Hayden's day, things seemed to drop off with the fourth, fifth and beyond teams compared to today.

I think it'd be interesting to look at the number of ranked teams in the Big Ten each year in Hayden's tenure vs. Ferentz's. Or even beyond that, look at the number of teams in the top 30 or 40 at the end of the year in the two eras.
 
SwirlinLingerie said:
CP - great stuff. Just a couple things to add here.

Someone mentioned the scholarship reductions, and I think that speaks to Ferentz's consistency as well. I recall the bad teams of the '80s as truly horrific, including the Big Ten doormats.

I'm not trying to take anything from Hayden's accomplishments, but once he got Iowa up and running, I think there was more of a "soft middle" in the Big Ten those days. He didn't have to deal with Penn State until his last 5 years or so. Beyond Ohio State and Michigan in Hayden's day, things seemed to drop off with the fourth, fifth and beyond teams compared to today.

I think it'd be interesting to look at the number of ranked teams in the Big Ten each year in Hayden's tenure vs. Ferentz's. Or even beyond that, look at the number of teams in the top 30 or 40 at the end of the year in the two eras.
Click to expand...

Good points.

Looking through the past seasons it did seem like Fry had tougher non-conference opponents, in general. In 1992 when he was 5-7 his non-conference opponents were NC State (loss), #1 Miami (loss), Iowa State (win), and #10 Colorado. They followed that up with #4 Michigan (loss), for 3 top 10 teams in their first 5 games.
 
Wonderful post. This should be required reading for everyone on this message board, but, of course, many of the young students and Tavern Hawks who regularly post on this board won't read it, because they always want to be 100% negative.

I really believe that this year's team has overachieved and has been one of Kirk's best coaching jobs:

1. One bad loss (Minnesota, in a game they really had won).
2. Huge upset win over ranked Michigan, which will probably go 10-2 and play in a BCS game.
3. Tremendous rally and win against a salty Pitt team.
4. Great effort against NW in a big night game, getting the Wildcat monkey off of our backs for now. NW is a very good team that will go bowling.
5. Win on the road at Purdue in November to improve our bowl standing. West Lafayette is a place where Iowa rarely wins.
6. A heartbreaking loss to a very good Cyclone team on the road. Iowa State may end up to be the season's surprise team in college football.

This has been a good season. It will go down as a great one if we upset Nebraska or if we win a 4th consecutive bowl game.

As you can see from this original post, seasons with 1 or 2 losses are very rare at Iowa; winning seasons and bowl games should be appreciated and cherished.

Unfortunately, that is never good enough for the vocal minority on this board.
 
SwirlinLingerie said:
CP - great stuff. Just a couple things to add here.

Someone mentioned the scholarship reductions, and I think that speaks to Ferentz's consistency as well. I recall the bad teams of the '80s as truly horrific, including the Big Ten doormats.

I'm not trying to take anything from Hayden's accomplishments, but once he got Iowa up and running, I think there was more of a "soft middle" in the Big Ten those days. He didn't have to deal with Penn State until his last 5 years or so. Beyond Ohio State and Michigan in Hayden's day, things seemed to drop off with the fourth, fifth and beyond teams compared to today.

I think it'd be interesting to look at the number of ranked teams in the Big Ten each year in Hayden's tenure vs. Ferentz's. Or even beyond that, look at the number of teams in the top 30 or 40 at the end of the year in the two eras.
Click to expand...

well, NW, Purdue and WI (maybe at the end of fry's tenure) weren't going to rose bowls, were they?

and fry has said that he was glad to be done coaching after the scholarship limits went down (i.e. brought parity). i'm pretty sure he said that in his book - high porch picnic.
 
The original post had me thinking about something else.

I was in Austin, Texas for a few days recently, and all the articles and columns seemed to be chalking up the Missouri game (for that Saturday) as a win. As an outsider, it seemed odd for Texas fans and media to take a game at Missouri (with an average Longhorns team) for granted. It seemed everyone, fan base and media included, was looking ahead to Kansas State, which they assumed would also be a win since it was in Austin.

The point is, there is nothing unique about Iowa fans holding somewhat unrealistic expectations for its team. No matter a program and coach's level of success, a certain element - perhaps even a slight majority - of those fans will consider the highest peak as the baseline of expectations. For Texas fans, they should be in national title contention every year. If they aren't, it was a down year and they need to be the next season.

For Iowa, this peak is contending for the conference championship. In some fans' minds, not competing for a conference championship is a down year and unacceptable two or three seasons in a row. Coaches and programs are expected to replicate with some consistency what they've been able to achieve at their highest point.

Without fail, nearly every program that has had any level of success goes through this. Part of the reason that I find Ferentz so likable and easy to cheer for is that the typical chain of events in college football is to fire part of your staff, certainly at least one coordinator, after one or two of the "dip" seasons. Texas did. Being a high level college assistant is a nomadic lifestyle, one in which you are usually thrown under the bus by the head coach at some point, despite spending far more time on the road recruiting and making much less money with no long-term security.

I've always admired Ferentz for his belief that this is wrong.

One more reason, in my mind, to relish being a Hawkeye fan.
 
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