I spent an hour and a half on the phone the other night with an old pal from grade school / jr high and HS. He walked on at Iowa. He said that some walkies are not that good and others play really well and practice and look good enough to start but they don't get their shot for a lot of reasons. In the final seconds of the RoseBowl snyder called down from the press box and said to put him in. Fry said to him, Coach Snyder said for you to go in.
He said in HS you go out and do an out pattern to the far sideline and the QB throws the ball(from the far hash) with an arc and you run under it like a bomb. In college you make your cut and the ball is there on a rope. Knows all those guys from that era personally (some are now coaches as you know) and everyone has an extremely high regard for Ferentz. Aknowledged that its very tough to recruit at Iowa.