With Kirk Ferentz becoming the oldest FBS coach, his challenges at Iowa will only become more difficult

With layoffs at UMass and North Carolina in the last two weeks, Ferentz, at 70, is expected to be the oldest FBS head coach in 2025. It is indeed hard work to keep the Hawkeyes above the bar.

Age is just a number, we are often told.

Next time I see a group of seniors drinking morning coffee at a McDonald’s or Hy-Vee, I’ll have to remember to ask if this is true. Or I’ll ask Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who at 66 is the oldest head coach in the NFL but has no one to overtake him and has a 10-1 team he’s trying to lead to a third straight Super Bowl victory .

Two things happened recently that will make Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz the oldest coach in the entire FBS at age 70 next season.

First, Massachusetts fired Don Brown last week. He was born one day before Ferentz in 1955.

Then on Tuesday, North Carolina fired 73-year-old Mack Brown, an ignominious departure considering Brown said Monday he plans to be back in 2025. His Tar Heels are 6-5. A 41-21 loss at Boston College last Saturday was apparently all Brown’s boss could take.

Nick Saban retired from Alabama in January at age 72. Many assumed that the head of college football would leave because he didn’t want to deal with NIL and its associated consequences. Saban said that wasn’t the case.

In an interview with Fox News, he said, “I just never wanted the program to fail…I felt like whether it was recruiting or hiring coaches and people wanting to know how long you were going to be there.” When you turn 72, it becomes increasingly difficult to promise people that you will be there for another four or five years.”

Ferentz never shows his hand when it comes to how long he wants to keep doing the job he’s done for the last 26 years, but he lives for this cause. He once told me that if he were forced to take a year-long sabbatical, he would spend it traveling around the country to observe football practices.

Ferentz absolutely loves what he does, even in the turbulent new landscape of player agency. But it’s only getting harder.

This season was probably Ferentz’s last best chance to lead the Hawkeyes to the College Football Playoff. A win at Ohio State was always a remote possibility at best, but the rest of Iowa’s schedule only had one other team currently ranked, Iowa State.

The Cyclones took the game away from the Hawkeyes in the second half, which is interesting in retrospect since Iowa has scored two-thirds of its points after halftime this season.

The Hawkeyes’ losses at Michigan State and UCLA are just as impactful, if not more so. The Spartans are 5-6 and the Bruins are 4-7, but both have destroyed Iowa’s defense.

This could have been a 10-1 Iowa team and a 10-1 Indiana team and SEC teams with multiple losses. However, we know this is simply not a playoff-caliber squad.

So the Hawkeyes play Nebraska on Friday night in what could potentially be a game for a spot in the ReliaQuest Bowl, with the winner playing a Mississippi or South Carolina, both of which are in the top 15 of the CFP rankings, on Dec. 31 in Tampa .

Iowa’s coaches will look beyond their bowl game Saturday morning. Can Ferentz pull another quarterback out of the transfer portal? Someone capable of accurately throwing a pass downfield would be a good start.

Cade McNamara, who was plagued by serious injuries in his two seasons at Iowa, has thrown three touchdown passes and six interceptions against Power Four Conference teams as a Hawkeye. The transfer portal makes the coaches all the more work. But you have to do it, and you have to get more solid shots than weak shots.

Ferentz has a really good football program that produces winning seasons year after year. There are no stampedes for bowl eligibility here. There is a standard that was set a long time ago. The Hawkeyes need to beat Nebraska just so they don’t fall well short this year.

Most people don’t want to work harder than ever before when they’re 70. Many couldn’t do it if they wanted to. However, some have no problem staying motivated because their work is their core.

Beating Nebraska and keeping the Huskers under them would make the offseason warmer in Iowa City. However, it wouldn’t change the fact that just keeping the Hawkeyes at an 8-4 level going forward will require Ferentz’s full effort – recruiting, developing and competing against hungry, capable coaching colleagues.

Like the one 20 years younger in Nebraska.

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