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THERE IS NO "NEW KIRK," JUST COMPLETELY 100% HUMAN KIRK

The Hawkeyes are 10-0 and they can thank their veteran head coach who is totally not a robot.

A lot of humans clap their hands
A lot of humans clap their hands
Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

Iowa is 10-0 for the first time in program history.

Nobody could have predicted that - certainly not a machine.

And that, in a sense, is why we are where we are now.

You see, there is no "New Kirk." There is just human Kirk and he is putting his blood, sweat and tears (all human features no less) into making the Hawkeyes one of the best teams in the country.

He's certainly no android, that's for sure. We know it, and importantly Kirk knows it.

I'm not sure that was always the case. In fact, I've long held the suspicion that Ferentz identified himself as a cyborg, designed to coach football, run a zone blocking scheme and punt the ball.

Last year's season took the cake. Iowa ran the same repetitive game plan (repetitive action is a machine's best friend) and did it with personnel that did not suit it. In a nutshell, Iowa was unable to adapt. And that is because Kirk Ferentz believed he was a robot.

Think about it... the gum-chomping, the continuous note-taking, the clapping no matter how a drive ended. You could totally see Arnold Schwarzenegger doing those things in one of the Terminator movies.

And just like the Terminator movies had a famous catchphrase, so too did the 2014 Iowa football season.

That's football.

So simple, so succinct, so efficient. It is totally something a man thinking he was a robot thinking he was a football coach would say. And guess what: that's football is three syllables. Know what else is? I'll be back. We're through the looking glass people.

So what prompted the change, how did we get human Kirk?

Well, like many of the good things this season, you do not have to look much further than junior cornerback Desmond King.

Let me set the scene. 12:15 to go in the first quarter, Tennessee ball on 2nd-and-11. Jalen Hurd takes a handoff gets to the edge and is pushed out of bounds by King after a gain of 25 yards.

King cannot stop, however, and ends up bowling into someone on the sideline. That someone was Kirk Ferentz.

Ferentz takes a big tumble, but gets up (a robot after all is indestructible). Ferentz, though, also has a gash by his eyebrow. That's not oil. It's blood. You know, like a human would have.

Ferentz not surprisingly is rattled and it rubs off on his team. The Volunteers run roughshod over Iowa, while the Hawkeyes produce one of the worst kickoff returns of all time.

I hope you get a good look at the picture above. That is the look a man gives when he is contemplating whether he truly is a robot or not.

We learned what Ferentz decided in short order. Iowa released a new depth chart just days after the bowl game, then made a very human decision in choosing a change from the norm and switching up quarterbacks.

All during the offseason, Ferentz talked of how his program was forced to evaluate everything. If that's not a subtle hint that screams: "I'm sorry I thought I was an android built exclusively to coach football, was hit in the head, noticed I was bleeding, realized I was actually human and am now using all of those human traits to my advantage" I don't know what is.

And now here we are. Iowa has used a varied running attack, broken out a fake field goal or two and rode the arm and moxie of its quarterback to a 10-0 mark. Kirk Ferentz is sitting in a giant nest for god's sake. The Hawkeyes are the most human they've ever been and they can thank their human head coach.

That is football. And totally human because I left out the apostrophe.