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BySEAN BOCK Nov 7, 3:31 PM
Iowa dominated on Saturday in the
49-7 win over Michigan State to put its record at 1-2 on the season.
With the win, Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz passed former Penn State head coach and
the late Joe Paterno for fourth in wins as a head coach in the
Big Ten conference. Ferentz, who has 163 wins in the Big Ten as a head coach,
trails Woody Hayes (202), Amos Alonzo Stagg (199), and Bo
Schembechler (194).
"It
probably means I've been here a while, right? You know, that stuff is all
great, and I promise you, it wasn't prominent on my mind," Ferentz said
following the game. "We needed to play well today. That's what we needed
to do.
"It's great. Whenever I retire,
whenever that day comes, hopefully it's not for quite a while, although I'm
sure some people are wondering about that, then we'll sit around and talk about
stuff like that. It's neat, but what's more important is we got a win today.
I'm really, really happy for our players."
Iowa
has been the head coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes since the 1999 season. In Ferentz's
first two games in Iowa City, his teams finished 1-10 and 3-9. In 2001, the script started to
flip as Iowa went 7-5 and making it to the Alamo Bowl. Since then, the program
under Ferentz has only missed a bowl game in two seasons (2007, 2012).
In 2018, Ferentz passed the legendary Hayden Fry
as the winningest coach in Iowa football history.
Ferentz
addressed this past week how tough it was to take over the Iowa program at
first.
"Just
taking over any program is a big challenge," he said. "And obviously
this situation -- I was familiar with it because I had worked here for nine
years under Coach Fry, so I looked at that as probably a good thing, because at
least I had a feel, at least I thought I had a feel for the program and the
state and what it took to be successful."
"And
I've said this many times before: a lot of my views and vantage points about
what it takes to be a successful college program were shaped because of Coach
Fry. He had a tremendous impact on my life and I was a young person at that
time."
Iowa's 0-2 start to the year was very
uncharacteristic for the program. That start was the first time Iowa began the
season 0-2 since 2000. The win on Saturday against the Spartans will serve as a
building block for the remainder of the season.
Ferentz reiterated earlier this week
that there is a lot of football left to be played this season and he likes the
direction that his team is heading in.
"There's
a lot of football in front of us and a lot of season in front of us,"
Ferentz said. "What we need to do is grow and find a way to push this
thing over the top. All you've got to do is look at our opponent. They did a
great job of that week one to week two over the last two weeks. That's what the
game is all good."
Following the win over the
Spartans, Iowa will go on the road next Friday to face off against Minnesota.
The Hawkeyes got the best of the Gophers ruining their undefeated season.
Minnesota is currently 0-2 on the season heading into this Saturday's contest
against Illinois.
Ferentz's career record as a head coach at Iowa is now 163-104.
