Iowa Football: Top 10 head coaches in program history
1. Kirk Ferentz: 1999-Present
Career Record: 143-97
Awards and Accomplishments: 2002 & ’04 Big Ten Champions, 2015 Big Ten Western Division Champions, 2002 AP College Football Coach of the Year, 2002 Walter Camp Coach of the Year Award, 2002, ’04, ’09, ’15 Big Ten Coach of the Year, 2015 Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Award, 2015 Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year Award, 2015 Woody Hayes Coach of the Year Award
Yes, Kirk Ferentz has surpassed Hayden Fry as the greatest head coach in Iowa football history. Now before you claim recency bias, look at Kirk’s resume. Ferentz has more than doubled the amount of Top 10 finishes that Fry had and while Fry had a better winning percentage, only three times in Ferentz’s 19 seasons has he finished with less than six wins, which is extremely impressive in today’s college football world.
Ferentz played his college football at UConn as a linebacker from 1974 to 1976 and got into coaching right after his graduation. He spent a year as a graduate assistant at UConn, two years at Worcester Academy as an assistant and a year as an assistant coach at Pitt in 1980 before he was hired by Hayden Fry to be Iowa’s offensive line coach for the 1981 season. He spent nine seasons as Iowa’s offensive line coach, winning two Big Ten Championships as an assistant before becoming head coach at Maine in 1990.
His three seasons at Maine were not impressive, never finishing above fifth in the conference and compiling an overall record of 12-21 before becoming offensive line coach for the Cleveland Browns in 1993 under Bill Belichick. Ferentz followed the Browns franchise to Baltimore and remained offensive line coach and became assistant head coach for three seasons before returning to Iowa City to replace his old boss Hayden Fry.
Ferentz’s first two seasons were dismal, going 1-10 in 1999 and 3-9 in 2000. His 2001 team made strides by finishing 7-5 with an Alamo Bowl victory, but the breakthrough came in 2002, with Iowa finishing the season 11-2, the most wins in school history. Ferentz would tie the record again 2009 with an 11-2 record and broke the record in 2015, leading Iowa to 12-2 season, and had them on the brink of the College Football Playoff.
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While some have consistently criticized Ferentz for underachieving, there is no question that the Iowa program has reached higher levels of success than they had under Hayden Fry, becoming an annual sight in January Bowl games. With a win in the season-opener against Northern Illinois, Ferentz will have surpassed his mentor on Iowa’s all-time winning leaders, but Ferentz’s status as the best Iowa coach was set following their remarkable 2015 season.