I think he's a great person and a great representative of the University.
As a recruiter with an eye for undeveloped talent, he's the tops in all of football.
As a head coach, keeping his assistants happy and content, he's also tops.
In fact, as far as running a football operation, there aren't many people I would want instead of him.
He's also perhaps the best business man in the state of Iowa, signing lucrative deals at exactly the right time (peaked expectations). More on this later.
He has his flaws, like all of us, and here is where I see them showing up:
- He's very stubborn to change
- It took him almost a decade before he was willing to replace starters based on game performance
- It took him almost a decade to start running QB sneak on 3rd and 4th and short instead of handing the ball off 7 yards deep
- It took way too many years for him to take ISU serious (by that I mean running aggressive down-field plays instead of coming out throwing the fullback)
- He does a lousy job of managing a player's eligibility (wasting their red-shirt freshman year, only to see them use up their eligibility when hitting full stride)
- Clock management is...well, Kirk should be sending Les Miles a Christmas card every year
But worst of all, he has bought into his own "coach-speak" on Iowa's ability to be successful. By this I mean he really, truly believes that it's a daunting task to beat every team in the Big 10 regardless of the talent he possesses.
It's in Kirk's personal interest to down-sell Iowa's chances to the fans and then "over-deliver", which some on this site fall for each and every time (ie. "We're Iowa", "We're not sexy", etc). But that mentality has lead him to coach the games today the same way he did in 1999 when the talent gap was reversed.
My best friend calls him Captain Coinflip because regardless of opponent, the game comes down to the end. Granted, we've made some progress: early on it use to come down to our ability to connect on a hail mary, then it progressed to hinging on our ability to execute an on-side kick, and now we're firmly in the category of needing to make the last-second field goal to secure wins.
The problem is that Kirk is not as good of a gameday coach with the superior talent as he was with inferior talent. This is something that is changeable, but I'm not optimistic that we'll see it change. The evidence for this is the standard "Hawks go up by 14 points and regardless of the quarter, the Hawks start running out the clock." Kirk is still in the mindset that the other team is better and the fewer plays are run the higher the chances of Iowa "stealing" a victory.
Why didn't we use time outs when Wisky was running down our throats and there were still 3 minutes left? We were also moving at will against them and clearly, whoever had the ball last was going to win. He was hoping the clock would run out before they could score a touchdown.
I'm as tired of all the flaws as the rest of Hawkeyenation, but I recognize that having Kirk with his flaws is better than not having him. We don't ever get blown out anymore like we regularly did with Hayden. We have a chance to win every game we're in, but unfortunately, we have a chance to lose every game we're in, too.
If Kirk would just accept the fact that he's been so successful at building up the PROGRAM that he doesn't need COACH like he's got a 1-10 team he can take us to the next level. If you believe, as Kirk does, that there's only a 50-50% chance of winning each game, whether it's Northwestern or Ohio State, we'll continue to see the upset and shocking loss in the same seasons.
He's getting paid $3 million dollars a year and there are frustrated people writing the checks. They like him and appreciate all that he and his family have done, but it's reasonable for the fans to EXPECT him to continue improving on his weaknesses, when they are the only things keeping the program from reaching the next level.
Go Hawks!
