How his 1981 O-line coach interview made Kirk Ferentz fall in love with Iowa: ‘I never wanted anything more’

SAN DIEGO, CA - DECEMBER 27: Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz celebrates the victory during the Holiday Bowl game between the USC Trojans and the Iowa Hawkeyes on December 27, 2019, at SDCCU Stadium in San Diego, CA. (Photo by Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
By Scott Dochterman
Nov 23, 2021

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Kirk Ferentz has the market cornered on self-deprecation, which is how he downplays his introduction to the state he has called home for more than 30 of the last 40 years.

But the 66-year-old dean of college football coaches actually has an early life memory that refutes his feigns of Iowa ignorance before arriving in Iowa City in 1981.

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“I did (have) my only broken bone I got here like when I was 5, because my great uncle was down in West Burlington,” Ferentz recalled in an interview with The Athletic. “So, I’d been in Iowa, but at that point, we were living in Michigan.”

Ferentz’s Iowa family connections actually go much deeper. His great-great-grandfather, E.B. Kirkendall, was a southern Iowa farmer. Ferentz’s great-grandfather, Dr. E.E. Kirkendall, obtained a medical degree from the University of Iowa and was a practicing physician in Burlington. He then became president of the West Burlington Savings Bank. On July 15, 1930, three bank employees picked up E.E. Kirkendall at his West Burlington residence and drove into Burlington. Their car motor stalled on a railroad track without working crossing signals. A commercial train then hit the vehicle and all four died as a result.

E.E.’s children Horace (Kirkendall) and Mary Esther (Reed) lived in the Burlington area for several years before Mary Esther moved to Michigan with her husband. Her daughter, Elsie May (Ferentz), is Kirk Ferentz’s mother. Horace Waldo Kirkendall — for whom Kirk Ferentz is named — was a lifelong Burlington-area resident and died in 1973.

“I’ve been by the house that they lived in before they moved out to the farmhouse,” Ferentz said. “They lived in town at one point when my mom was alive. That was one of her best days. She went down (to Burlington); my sister drove her down. They went there and then a couple different places where she used to come to spend the summers here as a kid.

“So, my mom was really thrilled when I came back here.”

There were no broken bones from when 25-year-old Kirk Ferentz returned to Iowa in 1981. In fact, it was just a job … until it wasn’t. Now 40 years later, Iowa is more home than anywhere else.

A winding career

Ferentz’s ‘aw shucks’ athletic ability may not have landed him in the NFL, but he was more than a speck on the recruiting trail. In 1973, Ferentz’s commitment to Connecticut sparked its own story in the Hartford Courant with the headline “Football Star Coming to UConn.” Ferentz played linebacker and fullback for Upper St. Clair Township High School in Pittsburgh and also was described as “an outstanding left-handed pitcher.”

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By 1976, Ferentz was a team football captain and was named the ECAC Division II Defensive Player of the Week after 12 tackles and two fumble recoveries in a win against UMass. A pregame speech against Boston University helped inspire the Huskies to their only home win of his senior season. Ferentz was named academic all-conference and earned defensive MVP honors.

After a 2-9 final season, Ferentz vouched for head coach Larry Naviaux, telling the Hartford Courant, “I’ll stick by him all the way through. He deserves better. I think he’s done his best. It’s wrong to put the blame on him. If our program is going to move in the right direction, he needs more help.” Naviaux was ousted, but Ferentz stuck around as a student assistant in 1977. The following two seasons, he taught English and coached multiple sports at Worcester (Mass.) Academy, including for head football coach Ken O’Keefe. Encouraged by his high school coach Joe Moore, Ferentz wanted to get into college coaching. His wife, Mary, disliked her job as a clothing manager in Burlington, Mass., so they moved back to Pittsburgh where Ferentz became a graduate assistant for Moore, who was Pitt’s offensive line coach. They had a two-year arrangement where if Ferentz didn’t get a full-time college job, he would go back to teaching and coaching high school football. Mary picked up a job selling kitchen cabinets for Critikon, of which she was successful.

“It made sense because she understood kitchens, and all the builders she worked with didn’t,” Ferentz said. “She wore jeans, khakis and work boots to work every day.”

Pitt finished No. 2 in the final 1980 AP poll and boasted future Pro Football Hall of Fame members Dan Marino, Jim Covert, Russ Grimm and Rickey Jackson, along with unanimous All-Americans Mark May and Hugh Green. Ferentz was committed to one more year under Moore, but he started looking at full-time employment.

There were two openings for offensive line assistant jobs: Appalachian State and Iowa.

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“I went through the spring so I figured like, ‘I think I could do this,’” Ferentz said. “I didn’t know any better. Appalachian State was the first one I saw and a guy on our staff, Joe Daniels, had worked with the head coach (Mike Working) at West Virginia so I figured, ‘Yeah, why don’t we try that?’ So, Joe Daniels called down there and the guy said I need somebody with the experience, so I never got a sniff.”

The other opening was at Iowa, where two-year offensive line coach Clovis Hale had returned to Texas to coach for Rice. Iowa’s linemen had lined up in four-point stances, which had become outdated in the early 1980s. Ferentz wanted to apply but he was nervous about talking with Moore.

“I was afraid to ask him because I thought he’s going to just rip me for being disloyal,” Ferentz said. “He looked at me like, ‘You think you might apply? Who the hell are you? You think you might? Who are you, Knute Rockne?’ He started lecturing me. He always gets you. No matter what approach you took, he’d nail you. He’s like, ‘Hell yeah you should apply. If I was your age, I take a bus. I’d walk to Appalachian State or to Iowa to get an interview.’ So, I was like, ‘OK, I’ll go after it.’”

Ferentz knew nothing about Iowa football, other than the program had struggled. He was unaware that there were no winning seasons at the school since 1961. From 1962-1980, Iowa had the 10thmost losses of any Division I football program. The other nine had at least one winning season during that sequence.

“Has there ever been a stretch like that?” Ferentz asked. “There’s 19 years of losing seasons, so there couldn’t have been. We were Kansas on steroids at that point, with all due respect to Kansas.”

If he was rejected by Iowa, Ferentz’s plan was to assist Moore at Pitt in 1981 and then look for a full-time job after the bowl game. Moore talked third-year Iowa coach Hayden Fry into granting Ferentz an interview. Ferentz flew into Cedar Rapids, and Iowa assistant coach Barry Alvarez picked him up at the airport. Alvarez drove him to Iowa’s meager football facility, where he met with Fry.

“He wasn’t trying to recruit me, but that’s just how he is,” Ferentz said of Fry. “You feel like you know him for 20 years after you meet with him for 20 minutes. I just felt like, ‘Boy, this guy’s pretty unique. He’s just kind of a special person.’”

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Ferentz spent most of his time with Fry and offensive coordinator Bill Snyder, along with Alvarez and defensive line coach Dan McCarney.

“I spent more time interviewing with Coach Fry,” Ferentz said. “It was more one-on-one with him, but Bill really impressed me, too. Barry was a great guy, and we had a connection unbeknownst to us but we’re both from that same part of the country.

“To me, it was a really nice campus compared to UConn. It was like, ‘Why can’t you win here?’ Then I heard about the fan support and all those kinds of things. It’s kind of cool because in Pittsburgh it’s all about the Steelers and here it’s all about the Hawkeyes.”

The more Ferentz talked with Fry and Snyder and saw how the program was being built, the more attractive the job had become.

“When I came in here, I was totally relaxed on the interview because it wasn’t like I was dying to come here,” he said. “I didn’t know what I didn’t know, quite frankly. But after being here for — it wasn’t 24 hours or whatever time I got here in the morning — when I got on the plane that evening, I never wanted anything more than to be here. So that was like how things change.

“But that was meeting Coach Fry, visiting with him and seeing there’s actually a town. There’s electricity and all those things. I thought Chicago was the end of the world. I didn’t know where Chicago was at that point; I was pretty provincial. So, I mean, I just came in here with a totally blank slate.”

Ferentz also had the luxury in that era of watching Iowa film before his interview with Fry because Pitt was going to play Illinois. That helped him evaluate some of Iowa’s players plus describe how he could block Illinois’ defensive linemen.

“The way Joe sold it was, ‘Hey, this kid, you’re going to have to train him in a lot of areas. He hasn’t recruited,’” Ferentz said. “That’s always a knock on any GA. ‘But he can recruit; that won’t be a problem. You’ll have to show him what you want in the run game, because we’re not really committed to the run at Pitt. But when it comes to protections and teaching pass technique and all that stuff, he knows his stuff inside and out.’”

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Pitt’s offensive line and ability to protect Marino intrigued Fry because he wanted to upgrade his passing attack. Fry couldn’t offer a ton of money — his highest-paid assistants were defensive coordinator Bill Brashier at $33,700 and Snyder at $32,500. After seven interviews and around 300 applicants, Fry hired Ferentz to join a hungry staff on the verge of resurrecting a national doormat.

“I couldn’t grasp the depth of the futility,” Ferentz said with a smile. “Why would I? I didn’t know where Iowa was again.”

(Top photo: Chris Williams / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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Scott Dochterman

Scott Dochterman is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Iowa Hawkeyes. He previously covered Iowa athletics for the Cedar Rapids Gazette and Land of 10. Scott also worked as an adjunct professor teaching sports journalism at the University of Iowa.