On September 21, 2013, Iowa played a home game against Western Michigan. Iowa was at or near its Ferentzian low point; the Hawkeyes had lost at home to Northern Illinois to start the season, only a year removed from going 4-8 with defeats in their final six games (and a loss to CMU at the end of September). As September 2013 began, Iowa was 4-11 in its last 15 games, and had lost five of those games by double digits. A lackluster victory over Missouri State, followed by a win in Ames, showed some hope of a turnaround, but Kirk was very much on the hot seat.
Western Michigan had just fired Bill Cubit and replaced him with regional goofball P.J. Fleck. Fleck had immediately instituted “new traditions” that involved a DJ in the end zone, “DJ Ill Mix,” a foghorn, and third-down hand gestures…performed by Fleck himself.
This immediately became meme, with Deadspin calling Fleck “the Swaggiest Bro-Coach to Have Ever Swagged.” That all happened about two weeks before Fleck and his Sea Broncos came to Iowa City.
And then Fleck really stepped in it: During his pregame press conference, Fleck praised Iowa’s consistency and stability as a program before saying that he could see himself coaching at Iowa someday.
Embattled Kirk Ferentz didn’t hear much of that first part. He heard a whole lot of the second part. And so Iowa beat Western Michigan 59-3.
If you define a blowout as a 30-point win, it’s been a while since Iowa blew anyone out. There was the 2021 Friday night win at Maryland, where Iowa was No. 5 in the country and everyone was picking the Terps to spring the upset in a shortened week. That was two years ago, with nothing since.
Recent Iowa blowouts fall into three categories:
The Snowball/Overmatched Opponent: This would include Maryland, where the Terps committed five turnovers and Iowa couldn’t help itself. This also applies to overmatched opponents getting methodically steamrolled, like Middle Tennessee State and Rutgers back in 2019.
The Vengeful God: These came on the heels of multiple losses, usually by just a few points total. The ultimate example might well be Iowa 63-Illinois 0 in Champaign back in 2018, where the 6-1 Hawkeyes had just dropped three straight by a total of twelve points, falling out of the Top 25 in the process, and needed to arrest the free fall in the most emphatic way possible. This also happened in the Covid season, where two losses by a combined five points in the first two games led to a 49-7 shellacking of Michigan State, and 2017 Nebraska, where Iowa had lost to Wisconsin and Purdue in infuriating fashion and needed a win for bowl eligibility, leading to a 56-14 blowout win (there was a 29-point win over Illinois earlier that year off of back-to-back losses, too).
The Message: P.J. Fleck got this version of things. Sometimes, Kirk doesn’t like a guy, or has a bone to pick with a certain coach or program. You can tell it’s this, as opposed to a regular ol’ Snowball game, in the way Ferentz works the clock and uses his special teams. Fleck’s team wasn’t good in 2013, but Kirk was still throwing the ball and using timeouts while comfortably out of reach.
The most famous example of this was, of course, Iowa 55-Ohio State 241 from November 2017. It’s not often that one gets to let their opinion of Urban Meyer be known so publicly without tweeting it, but everything you needed to know about Kirk’s thoughts on Meyer were encapsulated in a fake field goal where the holder threw it to the long snapper with Iowa up by 14 points:
As much as I love that game, it’s still not my favorite Vengeful Kirk game. No, that one goes back to 2010, as Iowa hosted Mark Dantonio’s Michigan State Spartans. There had been bad blood between the two for years, going back to the recruiting of Des Moines lineman David Barrent; Iowa had gotten his verbal commitment early in the process, but Barrent abruptly changed course after some negative recruiting from Dantonio and his staff, then badmouthed Iowa’s coaches after the flip. The next year, Iowa won on the last play of the game in East Lansing. But that wasn’t the real impetus: Spartan defensive back Chris Rucker had previously been arrested for drunk driving. He violated the terms of his probation and spent eight days in jail. He was released on Wednesday, reinstated on Thursday, and on the sideline on Saturday. And so Kirk unleashed the fury.
It was 30-0 when Adam Robinson scored with 1:01 left in the first half. The game was over. Michigan State kneeled on the kickoff, then attempted to run out the clock. On 2nd and 12, with seven seconds left, Dantonio handed the ball to backup running back Larry Caper and headed for the tunnel. Only, no, it wasn’t going to be that easy. Kirk Ferentz called timeout. Mind you, Iowa only had two timeouts and seven seconds; they were not going to get the ball back in any meaningful way. It didn’t matter. The timeout was a message, and the message had to be sent. Twice, it turns out, because Kirk again called timeout after a LeVeon Bell run on 3rd & 12. Sparty had to run four plays to kill 45 seconds, not because of anything tactical, but simply because Dantonio was Dantonio and had done a Very Dantonio Thing to try to win this game.
I was thinking of the Fleck Game, and the Dantonio Game, in large part because Iowa plays Western Michigan this weekend and hasn’t had a monster blowout like that 2013 game in quite some time. Given that Brian Ferentz is already behind on his performance improvement plan and still has nine Big Ten games left, a blowout win would certainly be welcome by his supporters.
I thought about the Dantonio Game for another reason entirely. You see, Michigan State is neck-deep in scandal yet again. Mel Tucker is currently suspended, and it appears highly unlikely that he’ll make a return before Sparty comes to Iowa City in 17 days. Michigan State’s move, in the face of scandal involving the football coach, was to bring back the previous football coach to leave in the face of scandal, Mark Dantonio.
And I have to think, given all that history, that neither the Tucker scandal nor the reinstatement of his old nemesis is going to sit particularly well with a Kirk Ferentz who is already incentivized to run up the score this year.
Mark your calendars.
Most people forget this.
Quick, someone in the Iowa media needs to inform KF that James Franklin has been expressing interest in the Iowa job and that Luke Fickell is the person who inserted the performance measures in Brian’s contract!
New Ferentz 2.0 is gonna run the score up on the NCAA. And they deserve it.