He saw Ferentz as the perfect fit and wanted to lock him down big time. The cost of losing a coach is pretty high—as high if not higher than firing aa coach. First off, if you lose a coach it often is because he is successful. So loss of continuity to the whole progam is costly. Second, once you replace a coach there is often a loss in recruiting…for at least one year, and as many as three. Then the loss of a coach affects current players, some will transfer. Then the loss of a coach means a change in system, and that has financial as well as time costs. For example, a new coach may affect hiring all accross the football operation. There are severance costs, search costs, etc. We are not just talking assistant coaches, who have contracts too that must be honored.

I have a friend who works at Microsoft in the HR department. He told me that an employee who is at the $100K salary level costs as much as $300K to hire train and replace. In other words, the cost of hiring the right person has costs associated with it, then people must take time away from thier work to help in training, ensuring that the employee can become fully operational, then to lose that employee have costs associated with retarting the process all over again.

If you have a good coach, who provides acceptable results, and has a vision and a plan that you believe in, that the fans support (read buy tickets), then you have a home run. You pay whatever is needed to LOCK that person down.

You can expect that Iowa State will be reeling for at least three to five more years. If you include the past two to three years then you have nearly a decade of LOSSES in every conceivable way. Loss of fan support, loss of good athletes, losses on the scoreboard, loss of confidence….you name it. I would bet that Iowas State over the past 7-10 years has paid more dearly for their three coaches, twofold, than Iowa has with Ferentz, desipte the heft of his contract. Ferentz is worth that much.