What should reasonable expectations be?

okeefe4prez

okeefe4prez

Well-Known Member
In this thread, please post your age range, your general annual expenditures on Iowa football and what you think reasonable expectations for Iowa football are.

Here are mine:

Age: mid 30's

Annual expenditures: $1500ish for home season tickets and parking, plus motels, gas etc., generally also try to hit at least 2 road games a year

Expectations: Coaching that is amongst the top 10 in the country since we are paying top 10 prices, consistent top 25 ranking, rare losses to truly inferior programs (once every 3 or 4 years), 8 wins in "down years" with room for one 6 or 7 win season maybe once every 5 years, at least 4 conference wins per year, one Rose Bowl victory in my lifetime, one Rose Bowl berth per decade

If Ferentz takes $60 million out of the Athletic Department over 20 years and doesn't even make a single Rose Bowl, notwithstanding the great run in 2002 and 2009, I think his career will be a disappointment in the aggregate.
 
I think there is a "next level", but it's not the ELITE level of OSU, Texas, Florida, etc. There's one in between that and where we are, where we can have some 8-9 win seasons when we're a little down (the "down" years for OSU, etc. are typically 9-10 win seasons), plus a few 6-7 win seasons when things just don't fall into place. That is a level that I think Ferentz can get us to.

It takes decades (like 30 years) for a program to elevate itself to the ELITE level. Ferentz could maybe get us there, but I doubt he does. He just isn't going to be here that long.
 
Mid thirties

I spend around $200 on tickets now for myself and wife, after giving up season tickets. I think it is easier to write when I am home and we have a little one now and that also makes it easier to just go to 2 or 3 games a year. I have attended the last 2 bowls but don't think I can afford to attend this one.

My expectations are for Iowa to be in the hunt for the new division every season. I expect every 2-3 seasons to have the talent in place to make a serious run at a BCS bid. Occasionally I would like to have the pre-season expectations of this season i.e. preseason national championship contender.

I have confidence in Ferentz to self evaluate what went wrong this season. Iowa's recruiting has been very good the last several years bringing better athletes while still being "Iowa" type of players. He needs to adjust to having better athletes on both sides of the ball. I believe he will. This season to me was unacceptable. My worst case scenario was 9-3. Losing to the likes of this Northwestern team and this Minnesota team falls completely on the staff imo. That must begin to change. This staff can no longer allow itself to be good guys. They must put teams away.
 
I cant believe you bring your own personal money into this. Money is relevant some people think 1500 is a lot and others pay 1500 for suits. All your other points are valid.

I am 25 live in New York so I only get to make 3 games a yr but never miss a game on TV. I can deal with 7-5 seasons but what I cant deal with is talent wasted. I thought we were past this kind of let down. You would think KF would have learned from the last let down like he learned from the USC game in 2002.

I expect 7 wins every 4 years and 8-10 in most years. I also want to see a Rose Bowl win. I was at the Orange last yr and that was special but I only hear of stories about Iowa Rose Bowls.

I dont think a trip to a NC game is out of the question in KFs tenure. He is getting NC money and we have been getting NC talent I dont care what anyone says.
 
Upper 30's. Season ticket holder.

Pretty simple: Don't lose to teams that have less talent. Beat a few teams with better talent. Play/coach with passion.
 
315hawkfan said:
I cant believe you bring your own personal money into this. Money is relevant some people think 1500 is a lot and others pay 1500 for suits. All your other points are valid.

I am 25 live in New York so I only get to make 3 games a yr but never miss a game on TV. I can deal with 7-5 seasons but what I cant deal with is talent wasted. I thought we were past this kind of let down. You would think KF would have learned from the last let down like he learned from the USC game in 2002.

I expect 7 wins every 4 years and 8-10 in most years. I also want to see a Rose Bowl win. I was at the Orange last yr and that was special but I only hear of stories about Iowa Rose Bowls.

I dont think a trip to a NC game is out of the question in KFs tenure. He is getting NC money and we have been getting NC talent I dont care what anyone says.
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I think it's probably safe to assume that if he's b*tching about having to spend $1500 for tickets, that he's NOT somebody who spends that much on a suit. Somehow I don't think there are all that many who make the trips that spend that much for a suit.
 
tm3308 said:
I think it's probably safe to assume that if he's b*tching about having to spend $1500 for tickets, that he's NOT somebody who spends that much on a suit. Somehow I don't think there are all that many who make the trips that spend that much for a suit.
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He better watch out, b*tching about money is very prolish behavior.
 
33 years old, and I live in Tampa, FL so can't make it to any games, outside of the bowl games we've had down my way. If I still lived in Iowa, I would try to make it to 1-2 home games per year anyway. Not that I feel that should have any impact on my expectations.

Outside of a couple of down years here and there, the Hawks have always been a good football program in my lifetime. I don't think 8-9 win seasons are too much to ask for, with the occaisional 10-11 win season. A 6-7 win season here and there when we are a bit down is not unreasonable either.

To me, it really depends on the year. If you graduate a lot of players and/or lose alot of key players to the NFL, the next year is bound to be down a bit. But this year, for example, I expected better than a 7-5 season. I know we lost some talent to the NFL, but still, we weren't exactly depleted. This season is a disappointment. Next year I would say maybe a 7-5 season wouldn't be as big of a shock, with a sophomore QB and losing quite a bit on our defense.

So expectations IMO should adjust a little bit from year to year, but generally speaking, 8+ wins I think is reasonable.
 
tm3308 said:
I think it's probably safe to assume that if he's b*tching about having to spend $1500 for tickets, that he's NOT somebody who spends that much on a suit. Somehow I don't think there are all that many who make the trips that spend that much for a suit.
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You're right - I only buy suits when Brooks Brothers has one of its sales because I won't spend over a grand on one.
 
tm3308 said:
I think there is a "next level", but it's not the ELITE level of OSU, Texas, Florida, etc. There's one in between that and where we are, where we can have some 8-9 win seasons when we're a little down (the "down" years for OSU, etc. are typically 9-10 win seasons), plus a few 6-7 win seasons when things just don't fall into place. That is a level that I think Ferentz can get us to. .
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Here is a link to winning percentages of all college programs 2001 - 2009.

You can throw out TCU, Boise and Utah, because they don't play a tough conference schedule

I-A Winning Percentage 2001-2009

Tell me where that level is between the elite schools with national title lineage, and where Iowa has been during that span, which is nearly a decade.

They were four wins off of Miami of FL, which was 12th on that list...the only non historical power interloper on that list is VT.

Teams that have a national title lineage and better history than Iowa that performed beneath Iowa during that span: Nebraska, Michigan, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Penn State, Florida State, Alabama. ..
 
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JonDMiller said:
But do we still expect to beat PSU 8 out of 9 times?
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Yes, if you beat PSU 8 out of 9 then everyone including fans, players, and coaches should NEVER expect to lose to Northwestern or Indiana. It wouldn't take much tweaking to make sure that never happens too but we do the same thing against those teams every year but expect to get different results. Insanity??
 
JonDMiller said:
But do we still expect to beat PSU 8 out of 9 times?
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I don't think anyone is denying the fact that Iowa is a top tier college football program.....which is why it's so frustrating when we lose to Minnesota......and why it's so frustrating when our staff makes mistakes like not calling timeout prior to the Wisconsin fake point. I guess I expect more. Maybe I shouldn't.
 
HawkI101 said:
Yes, if you beat PSU 8 out of 9 then everyone including fans, players, and coaches should NEVER expect to lose to Northwestern or Indiana. It wouldn't take much tweaking to make sure that never happens too but we do the same thing against those teams every year but expect to get different results. Insanity??
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Beating Penn State THAT consistently is an anomoly. Same goes for NW and us. It's a match-up issue. I'd be happy if we'd beaten PSU 5 of 9 times. 8 of 9 is not typical.
 
tm3308 said:
Beating Penn State THAT consistently is an anomoly. Same goes for NW and us. It's a match-up issue. I'd be happy if we'd beaten PSU 5 of 9 times. 8 of 9 is not typical.
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How many games have won in that time frame where we've beaten clearly better teams? I can't think of them all, but some of the PSU games come to mind, but a lot of the PSU games, we have had fairly even talent, and Coach Ferentz should get props for those wins.

How many games have we lost in that time frame where we've been beaten by teams with lesser talent exploiting our philosophy? I think this number is higher than the number of games where we've played above our talent level and won. Coach Ferentz needs to be called out for those losses.
 
I'm 31 and spend anywhere from $100-$500 annually. (until i get my degree that is)

As a fanbase we spend as much or more than anyone in the country. With that in mind, i always take a look at returning players and schedule prior to basing my opinion. And after last years first bcs win in the last 50 years, everyone went crazy. I however backed off and said i'd be happy with 9-3 and another cap1/outback bowl. However, I reallistically expected this team to win 10. I also expected the 08 team to win 10 games looking at the talent and (knowing shonn greene was gonna dominate).

This team has underacheived like no other team i've witnessed at Iowa. Probably as underacheiving as Steve Alford's 3rd season at Iowa when he lost the team and lost half the fans with that.

With as much money as our fans are willing to fork out and the facilities we have, I expect us to win 9 games/year, including bowl game.

I see a lack of depth on this team that i haven't seen at iowa in a while. How can we have 1 good cornerback on our team? How do we not have anyone that can push Brett Greenwood for playing time? It just feels like this staff is like a student that is just scraping together what they can and doesn't have the coaching depth required to be a consistent 9 and 10 win team. At least not in this current Big 10. It mightve gotten by in the past, but the Big 10 is getting bigger, stronger and deeper by the minute. Almost overnight it seems. I think this year's big 10 would top to bottom beat every team from last year's big 10.

We better get with the program or we're gonna be left behind. And btw, I fully expect this staff to be back and improve. When you win a bcs game, you get plenty of slack out of me.

I think we all just looked at last years results, and looked at this years schedule and thought everything was in place. We didn't account for the lack of depth in key areas where we had injuries. I fully expected Jewell Hampton to be an extremely explosive, game changing back. And I expected the d-line to make up for the losses of Angerer and Edds and just didn't our replacement for Amari Spievey would be as big a drop-off as it was. Still, we had chances and didn't make the most of it.
Very dissapointing, but we have next year.
 
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