HS, I generally agree with you that KF must accept a higher degree of scrutiny. However, in this case, I think he has justification to be annoyed. I have trouble reconciling the inconsistency between the extremely minor charges and the resulting media attention received. Along those lines, I think your analogy to Reid’s sons is a stretch. Reid’s kids, if I remember correctly, were hit with at least one DWI, a road rage incident and various drug possession charges. I think the media coverage may have been legit if James got popped for a bunch of weed or vicodin in his dorm room, beat someone up, or got a DWI. But, as you point out, James got nailed for the two most minor and most common offenses in IC. With all the shit going on in the world, a story like this is front-paged solely for shock value. Finally, as Morehouse points out, KF was there to address the state of the team. While such questions certainly are fair, I can see how he gave maybe a more flipant response than would otherwise be expected.

But I took it to mean that Iowa is really a great state to live in since we don’t have the crime, violence, turmoil, etc. that would normally capture front-page headlines, but instead are concerned about minor alcohol related offenses and football. It just doesn’t seem to be KF’s style to be sarcastic about the state he has praised on so so many occasions.

Lately, (in the last couple years especially), KF has been mentioning what a great state Iowa is to live in, work in, and raise kids in. Therefore, I am betting he meant Iowa is the great state we all live in, where there are few enough problems that when his son is acting like a numbskull, it would make front page news. The “major publication” bit was probably directed at any paper that put James’s stupidity on the front page or in an article, instead of in a police log or daily record, where it would show up when the person is not a son of a major state employee.

On a side note, if you don’t live in Iowa City (as I do not), you may feel like the assaults and muggings and seeming tension between natives and people who recently moved there are making for an atmosphere that is trending a bit negatively. So, I can see why the Press-Citizen might feel like it has to report on the coach’s son just like it would about some idiot who punched someone on the ped-mall.

I don’t have a big problem if the P-C wants to report this with a headline. However, I would think the Register, the Gazette, and any other media outlet should have more important things to report. You know, like ash-borer larvae, or celebrity birthdays.

The thing that is frustrating Ferentz here, I am betting, is not the state of Iowa but the state of liminality. And, yes, that this has received too much local media coverage. That is an argument that no serious person would contest. It has received an awful lot of coverage, not remotely commensurate with the actual event. There are too many misdemeanor arrests in Iowa City to cover and believe me that gymnasts, swimmers, baseball players, field hockey playes have all been cited this year, to no coverage whatsoever. This much coverage would be more appropriate to Pierre Pierce shit or a crime that is unequivocally a felony.

No, this is a parent talking here, not the head coach of Iowa. This is a parent lamenting an American phenomenon of college campuses, and athletes in particular, every year. These athletes are the ultimate liminal entities, considered BOTH boys and men and the media and fans and college administrators see it whichever way best suits their agenda. James Ferentz is a boy to the Iowa athletic department who house him in special housing, feed him, rule him and benefit from his expertise to the tune of millions of dollars. To fans he is an adult—my God he is so big and strong and able bodied they think…he is manly. To the press though, he is both and they love to play it both ways.

Ferentz is saying that his son is not an adult here. And on this issue, the law is clear. He is not of legal age. The law is clear, he is not fully maturated and deserving of the right to make his own choice about whether to purchase and consume alcohol publicly. And, if the law is clear that his is NOT an adult, then why, thinks Kirk Ferentz, is the press reporting on this as though he is an adult. We protect children in this country, he is thinkinig, and he is arguing that his son thus should be given ALL the rights we afford children, or in his son’s case teens, who make a bad choice. In America we treat children differently than we do adults because we assume that this period of life is precisely about learning from mistakes, after having made them. Children deserve a bubble of protection as they awkwardly figure the world out. Adults, on the other hand, are expected to know better having passed (or failed) their period of trials and tests. Kirk Ferentz is frustrated that the press treats his son as though he is a fully matured adult and should know better, and should face the music for not knowing better.

The double standard is the problem for Ferentz. Pure and simple.

The press plays these things to their advantage all the time. Meaning, they play it in the most sensationalistic way. Media in America are privatized, they needs to generate revenues to exist. They need readers and viewers to carry on. Sensationalism sells. And even the best journalists succumb to the harsh economic reality of the BUSINESS of news in their reporting. Regardless of your politics on when a person deserves full adult treatment or to be shielded from it, you cannot deny the lack of consistency on the issue of alcohol.

Twenty-five or more years ago if you were the age of James Ferentz you would be been legally drunk if you were over 19 years of age. I was on campus in 1981 when Mark Bortz got drunk and went bow hunting at the student union pond for ducks, in mid-afternoon. He killed, as I recall, several. The police drove him home to sleep it off. He was 19 years old. He had gone to a ritual event downtown outside a bar where the band of the evening tuned their instruments and then played a practice session and the public got in for free and got drunk. Half the crowd had classes in the late afternoon after the session; it was COMMON, if not a ritual, to return to classes three sheets to the wind. My professor confronted me one day after having done so to say, “Jesus what a waste of good tuition money.” In my case, I never did it again. The Bortz issue was commonly known on campus, and not reported by anyone.

Ferentz is neither a boy nor an adult, and so he gets — simultaneously — the best and worst of both of those worlds. That is what is frustrating here for Kirk Ferentz. Like most football coaches, he lives in a world of absolutes, clear rules and unequivocable expectations. His ability to enforce them can be the difference between winning and losing. So, regardless your feelings about alcohol and drunkenness, you cannot deny that both Ferentz’s have a legit beef here.

• Liminality – the transitional period where things are ambiguous.

I may or may not be a target here, but that’s an excellent argument. Unlike The Germs, what I do is not secret.

My only intention yesterday was to get on record that James was indeed on the team for next fall. That’s all. I didn’t play it up like “Watergate.” I didn’t use the word “reinstate,” because I’m not sure they were ever really away from the team.

To me, they’re “players.” I’m not a lawmaker. I don’t even know how old half these guys are. If they’re “players,” what they do is news — whether it’s signing an LOI, kicking a winning field goal or getting pinched for public intox. We aren’t able to talk to freshman, I believe, for exactly what Stoops is writing about here. Ferentz doesn’t want them consumed by the circus before they can form a foundation as a college student. I’ve written a hundred times that I’m OK with that. Sucks for me, but I believe that’s a sound philosophy. The one thing that shoots that to hell is arrests. Once you’re on the grid, it’s out there and there’s no way to author it.

Another great point is the amount of scrutiny these arrests receive. If it were up to me, PAULAs wouldn’t be in the paper. Pub intox arrests would be a paragraph. Felonies would be a big headline. But it’s not up to me. Competition has driven this to madness. I’m forced to engage in this. I try to play it down, but that’s where we’re at in 2009. If the Bortz thingie happened now, it’d lead every TV newscast in the state, be a gigantic headline in every newspaper and be fodder for the radio talkshows we do have here.

I hope this makes sense. It’s not nearly as elegant as Stoops’ post. And I hope readers don’t think I go into news conferences looking to stir sh** up. I do actually want to know about football. I want to know what happened at QB at Pitt. I know the questions I ask aren’t always going to be popular — fans revere the Hawkeyes and Kirk Ferentz — but please know that they’re asked respectfully with an eye toward eliciting information. I don’t ask questions to get my name out there or to make my presence felt. Frankly, I don’t need the agita.

I’m always open to discussion here http://marcmwm.wordpress.com/ or via e-mail, marc.morehouse@gazcomm.com.

Now, can we get back to the poop jokes and Paterno secretary?

That, ladies’ rowing team alternate or starting QB, 25 years ago, none of this would be news.

We live in a time when we expect our heroes to be supermen, when they are just young men, doing things that young men do.

Is redshirt freshman PAULA of the month in the wrong? Maybe. Is he breaking the law? Sure. Is he doing anything that is unethical, immoral, or damaging to the fabric of our society? Doubtful.

Should we care? No. Do we? Obviously, someone does, because these stories keep showing up in regional and sometimes national news.

Me, let me know if any of the guys get in a car. THAT shit is worth publicly humiliating them. But if they want to have a few too many underage drinkies with their buddies, who cares, as long as they can walk home or have a designated.