John Bohnenkamp for Pen City Current Sports
IOWA CITY — Kirk Ferentz has never been one to embrace change, but he’s willing to accept it.
The Big Ten doesn’t look anything like it did when Ferentz became Iowa’s head coach 25 seasons ago.
The NCAA’s transfer portal wasn’t even a thought.
But here we are, it’s 2023, players can come and go and apparently so can schools now that UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington are on their way to the Big Ten next season.
Basically, Ferentz said on Friday, that’s college football these days.
“Let's just call it what it is — it's entertainment,” Ferentz said at Iowa’s media day on Friday.
It’s a sport, and Ferentz loves to coach it, a point he made clear after that statement.
But he also understands that 18 Big Ten teams provide more television inventory than the 14 before the conference decided to expand its footprint to all of the United States. FOX, CBS and NBC have windows to fill on Saturday — heck, maybe even Thursday and Friday — and if they’re willing to spend big money for it, so be it.
Ferentz may not like it, but it is the cost of doing business these days.
“I'm a senior citizen — I can say what the hell I think now, so what the hell,” Ferentz said. “I mean, the world has changed so much.”
When Ferentz arrived in the Big Ten, there were 11 teams. Nebraska made 12, Maryland and Rutgers made 14 and provided East Coast markets for the Big Ten Network, and now here comes four teams from out west who grabbed the first lifeboats out of the sinking PAC-12.
Ferentz doesn’t really care much for games on the West Coast. He can deal with bowl games — the Holiday Bowls are fun, the ones in Arizona are fun, the Rose Bowls are historic but have been painful.
It’s the 9:30 p.m. starts in a regular-season game on a Saturday night that Ferentz would rather avoid, but they’re going to be a part of Big Ten life now. There’s a reason why FOX opened a wallet with extra cash to get Oregon and Washington — PAC-12 After Dark is now becoming Big Ten After Dark.
Road games on a Saturday mean getting on a plane on Friday, playing the game on Saturday, and flying home that night. If it means going to Seattle or Eugene, well, the Hawkeyes will just have to adjust.
Ferentz, though, knows that his neighbors in Iowa’s athletic department aren’t going to be as fortunate. Basketball will take a chartered jet, but there is talk the Big Ten might try to consolidate trips — two games in Los Angeles, or somewhere else. That could mean five days on the road.
And if you’re softball, baseball, volleyball, etc.? Well, hope you enjoy airports.
“My thought a year ago was it's not that big a deal in our sport,” Ferentz said. “We travel five times a year. Most of them are pretty easy trips. Our guys don't miss much class time. (An) 11:00 game on the West Coast is not ideal because the turnarounds are tough anywhere.
“But the sports in my mind … you think about the Olympic sports last year, especially if you're one of those two West Coast school teams where a home game is Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, the pressure it's going to put on those student-athletes — and they still say student-athlete — but just all those strains, flying commercial, the whole nine yards, that was my thought a year ago (when USC and UCLA were accepted into the Big Ten).”
Ferentz knows that football is the driver of all of this. If a five-day basketball road trip is the price paid for filling every time slot possible on fall weekends, well, so be it.
That’s entertainment.
John Bohnenkamp is an award-winning sports reporter and contributor to Pen City Current.
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