LUNCH LINKS REFUSES TO JOIN THE HOA

We’ve been dropping a metric fuckton of basketball content lately in regards to this disastrous hoopyball season, so now let’s take the time to check in on Iowa football.

The season is only 232 days away!

Kirk Ferentz addressed the media yesterday. He didn’t say much. But he also did touch on some important and interesting things. Let’s get to the questions!

First up is one of the best deflections I’ve seen from Kirk in awhile:

Q. With Wiegers leaving, are you comfortable with your quarterback depth now?

Yeah, again, we talked about James as a possibility. As Josh’s season evolved, became a distinct possibility that he may leave. And certainly Tyler Wiegers, Tyler Wieger’s, situation, I look at like Cody’s and Jake’s a couple of years back where I don’t foresee that as a selfish move at all. I think quarterbacks are a unique discussion to me personally. When they transfer.

It’s probably a good thing sometimes because we haven’t had a better kid in our program in 19 years than Tyler Wiegers. What a tremendous young man, tremendous family. He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do and I can’t tell you all the things he does, work-wise, like extra work that I’ve seen him do and he does a lot of stuff, as do a lot of our players, I don’t see everything obviously. But I’m not like Santa Claus.

So I’m happy for him. I’m really excited. I hope he has a great year, and I think he will.

Not even a sniff of an answer in there!

Don’t worry, he didn’t get let off the hook. This happened about 10 questions later:

Q. How will you approach the backup quarterback situation?

It’s wide open. Wide open.

Spencer Petras is on campus now. He’ll be battling with Peyton Mansell as Nathan Stanley’s backup in all likelihood.

College football is getting a tenth assistant! And it sounds like Iowa already has a guy in its crosshairs:

Q. With the tenth assistant, what is your plan to utilize that person and then what’s your timetable for that?

As you might know. Or imagine. We had a plan in place. At least kicking something around. And looked like it was going to take place last year. I can’t remember when it was going to be. Was it spring? I don’t know.

So we had a plan in place. And pretty much it just got pushed back. So I think I know where we’re going on this whole thing, but I also think there’s no compelling reason to pull the trigger right now or make a decision.

So we’ll tread water here for a little bit and just see what the landscape looks like and probably do something here mid-month, late month, somewhere in that ballpark, possibly, early February. And we’ll go from there.

Q. Is LeVar going to be your special teams coach exclusively?

That’s part of the plan. That’s part of the plan that I announced last year to see him transitioning into that role and free Seth up to more defensively more quality time on the defense, which he’s kind of been doing two jobs and so I think that will help fortify the efforts in the defensive room, just give him one thing to concentrate on. I think it will help our special teams and I thought LeVar did a great job with that transition this year, he was tremendous. Seems really comfortable in that role.

Seems like that’s a really good niche for him, and so, yeah, I’m really excited about that. I think it’s going to be a good thing.

So that means LeVar Woods shifts from tight ends coach to special teams. People are speculating Brian Ferentz will switch from running back-coaching duties over to tight ends and Iowa is targeting a running back-specific coach. It makes some sense when you get past only the second most click-baity* Tweet of the day:

Other things we learned from the presser include:

• Keegan Render will slide to Center
• Noah Clayberg is transferring to Dordt College. With James Daniels, Josh Jackson, Tyler Wiegers and now Clayberg leaving, Iowa has at least four spots to hand out scholarships. It appears one has already been given away.
• Matt Nelson got hurt in the Pinstripe Bowl and is out through spring ball. Kirk assured everyone he’d be fine through then, however.

*And now on to the most interesting but least important news of the week!

You read that right. The Associated Press is reporting on a legal kerfuffle between the Ferentz family and its neighbors. The piece includes the following anecdote!

The lawsuit is part of a long-running dispute in which Ferentz and his wife, Mary, have been portrayed as difficult, stingy and privacy-obsessed, clashing with their image as friendly philanthropists who support the Iowa Children’s Hospital.

Just because Kirk is rich doesn’t mean he deserves privacy!

Deadspin actually gets into the dispute much more succinctly than the AP.:

The Ferentzes bought land on a small street north of Iowa City shortly after moving to town, and throughout their time there, they’ve preferred to keep the road gravel, so as to preserve a sense of suburban privacy. The neighbors weren’t as charmed, as one testified that, “The gravel was horrible. It was constantly washing out. It was enormously dusty. It was messy and would blow across fields. It was frankly hazardous to your car.” Neighbors testified that the Ferentzes planted a row of trees that began to grow out of control and encroach upon the road, impinging access and making it difficult to drive on the road. A neighbor’s sideview mirror was knocked off by some deer fencing on the Ferentz property, and that same neighbor also said that Kirk would have a large coaches meeting at his house after gamedays, and that all the cars would leave him blocked in and unable to go to church.

Playing Devil’s Advocate here ... I did just watch All the Money in the World and I can’t get the image of Ferentz as JP Getty out of my head, refusing to pay a frivolous sum (to him) for the sake of pride.

Either way this is stupid!

Other Links

• It’s good to be back, writes Adrian Clayborn for the Player’s Tribune. Really good read there.
• BoilerHawk fixes the Big Ten’s officiating problem.
• Iowa is sending three former players to the Pro Bowl this year. That’s just shy of the program record.
• We can bitch about Fran McCaffery all we want this year, but be glad we aren’t Minnesota right now (or ever).
• KIRBY SMART IS A TRAITOR

And that’s that