The Short List: Tim Polasek

An Old Friend Enters the Chat

Iowa Football doesn’t really do coaching searches. I just turned 43 years old, and there has been exactly one head coach vacancy in my lifetime. Perhaps more shocking: There have been just four defensive coordinators since 1979 (Bill Brashier, Bobby Elliott, Norm Parker and Phil Parker) and only six offensive coordinators (Bill Snyder, Carl Jackson, Don Patterson, Ken O’Keefe, Greg Davis, Brian Ferentz). So when a coordinator position opens up, we go to FlightAware and try to have some of the fun that everyone else gets when they can their coach like tuna.

Previous Short List Posts:

• Paul Chryst

• George Barnett and Eric Koehler

Craig Bohl retired yesterday. If you’re not familiar, Bohl was the longtime Nebraska assistant who kick-started North Dakota State’s domination of the FCS in the mid-aughts¹. In 2013, he beat Kansas State in the season opener and won a third consecutive national title with a four-touchdown margin in the title game. All foes vanquished, he moved to Wyoming, where he compiled an even 60-60 record over ten seasons.

The North Dakota State tree was pretty limited in early times, but has expanded recently. Bohl’s offensive coordinator, Brent Vigen, went with Bohl to Wyoming in the same role, and stayed until 2020 before getting the head coaching job at Montana State. Bohl’s NDSU successor, defensive coordinator Chris Klieman, won four titles in five seasons before succeeding Bill Snyder at Kansas State. He has since made four bowl trips in five seasons, and a Big 12 title game appearance last year.

When Klieman took over at NDSU, he elevated a longtime Bison offensive assistant into the coordinator spot. Tim Polasek, who had coached running backs, fullbacks, tight ends and special teams at various points over the previous seven years, took the reins of NDSU’s offense. They continued destroying fools: NDSU handily beat Iowa State in the 2014 opener, put up 37 on FCS No. 1 Jacksonville State in the 2015 national championship game, and ran all over a ranked Iowa team in 2016.

Following that season, Greg Davis retired from Iowa, and Brian Ferentz moved up to the coordinator chair. Kirk Ferentz, going full-on “can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” threw a big paycheck at Polasek and made him offensive line coach. From outside, it looked like Iowa might be considering the sort of variable gap/zone running scheme that Klieman and Polasek had used so effectively in Iowa City a few months prior. Instead, Polasek got a crash course in outside zone; the offense was still definitively Kirk’s. Nevertheless, his four years as offensive line coach were definitively the best of the Brian Ferentz era, in large part because the line was, at a minimum, functional.

In 2020, Vigen left Wyoming for Montana State, and Bohl came calling on Polasek. He has spent the last three seasons coordinating Wyoming’s offense, an offense that looks like the hybrid of Iowa’s zone running scheme and NDSU’s variable/deception thing. Results have been decent if unspectacular: Wyoming has made bowl trips each of those three seasons, the first time in program history that’s been accomplished. There hasn’t been a scoring supernova — run-heavy possession-based systems rarely are — but if the Brian Ferentz incentive plan was in effect, he would have hit 325 points twice in those three seasons.²

Polasek obviously knows Iowa, and Ferentz, and the offense. He would also step into Iowa at an interesting time, at least for a coordinator with his background: While Iowa’s offense was still an abject failure in 2023, the Hawkeyes — well, Kirk — embraced gap running and inside zone concepts this year far more than any other season before. There at least seems to be some acknowledgement that waiting for an offensive line to block the stretch zone so effectively that nine-man fronts don’t matter is a fool’s errand, and that some variety is necessary. Polasek coached quarterbacks in addition to his coordinator duties at Wyoming, and had success this year with a dual-threat attack run by fifth-year senior Andrew Peasley. If Iowa’s goal is to incorporate more quarterback run into its existing system with a healthy Cade McNamara or incoming commit James Resar, Polasek provides a guidebook.

It also helps that Polasek is on the open market as of Wednesday. Wyoming has already announced that it is promoting the current defensive coordinator, Jay Sawvel, to head coach. Sawvel is a Jerry Kill guy, and doesn’t have any direct connection with Polasek or the NDSU pipeline. He may well opt for keeping the same plan for offense at Wyoming, but if Iowa was to reach out, neither Polasek’s allegiance to Bohl nor the possibility of being his heir should get in the way. The sticking point may be in Manhattan, Kansas: KSU coordinator Collin Klein just took the job at Texas A&M, leaving an opening on Kleiman’s staff to promote Polasek should he choose to accept it.

If you’re looking for Kirk Ferentz’s path of least resistance, this is probably it: An assistant who knows the dynamics of the program and the intricacies of the offense, who can expand on that offense without losing Ferentz’s preferred aesthetic and focus, who knows both quarterbacks and offensive line, and who can be sold to everyone as an experienced playcaller and successful coach. There are splashier hires out there. There are probably more Ferentzian ones, as well. But as a check-the-boxes, don’t-rock-the-boat decision, Tim Polasek has to be at or near the top of the list.

1. NDSU had been successful at Division II before that, but Bohl engineered the step-up to Division I from essentially the moment he got there, and had them winning titles within four seasons.

2. And this is Laramie, the highest-elevated FBS program in the country, where the weather turns in mid-October and doesn’t let up from there. There are days where Mike Leach couldn’t score 14 up there.