ALTOONA, Pa. -- I've always had a lot of respect for Kirk Ferentz and the way he's run his Iowa program. Now, that's not to say I've enjoyed watching the boring brand of football the Hawkeyes play, because I haven't.
I love offense. I want to see teams push the tempo, be aggressive, throw a lot, score a bunch.
Basically the antithesis of what Iowa does.
Still, Ferentz has been successful with what he does. I use the phrase that they just "Iowa" people.
Iowa certainly Iowa'd Penn State on Saturday in a 23-20 win, playing its usual conservative game until finally breaking through with one big offensive play for the go-ahead touchdown.
It was a beautiful play, so give Iowa credit for that.
But the lasting memories of that game will always be that Sean Clifford was injured and knocked out with Penn State up 17-3. The Lions would have won easily if Clifford had stayed in the game, and you cannot convince me otherwise.
The other lasting memory will be the completely classless behavior by the Iowa fans and coaches when Penn State had players get injured on the field. The fans booed, thinking the Lions were faking injuries, and assistant coach LeVar Woods did something despicable when he acted on the sideline by falling down when PSU defensive end Arnold Ebiketie was injured on the field a mere 15 yards away.
Look, I'm tired of writing about all of this stuff. This is the third time I've addressed it since the game ended.
But it needs to be addressed again today after Ferentz took the classless route in his press conference Tuesday of condoning the crowd's pathetic behavior, and then himself accusing Penn State of faking injuries.
After reading this load of nonsense below, I can honestly say I have lost just about all respect for Kirk Ferentz.
The veteran coach had a chance to quiet things down with a respectable response when asked about the injuries, and instead he only poured gas on the fire.
Here's the full exchange, from the ASAP Sports transcript:
Q. Do you have any thoughts on with the injuries, it's been talked about out there, curious the other night if you noticed that?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, heard a little bit. Football's a hard competitive tough game and fans are into it just like everybody else is into it and, first of all, I know a couple players were legitimately hurt, I know that, I saw one sitting on the bench, for whatever reason, there was an opening and I saw him and I know he had an ice bag on his leg. Obviously the quarterback didn't come back. So I hope those guys are well, I don't know what their status is, nobody wants to see anybody get hurt. Nobody. But I think probably it's a reaction to there were a couple guys that were down for the count and then were back a play or two later and our fans aren't stupid, they're watching, they know what's going on. I've been here 23 years I think that's only the second time we have seen that kind of stuff going on. I know it's a topic nationally right now, it was one of the discussions of the rules, they don't quite, nobody knows the answer to it, but it's -- and I also know for a fact that people -- I'm not saying, I just, there are two people in our building that have been places where that was "scuba" or "dive" -- no "scuba" and "turtle" were the code words. So it goes on, we don't coach it, haven't really been exposed to it and our fans, I thought they smelled a rat, I guess, I don't know, so they responded the way they responded.
The couple of key phrases there are "our fans aren't stupid" and also "they smelled a rat."
Well, from my view, Iowa's fans acted pretty stupid, completely lacked common sense and need to get their noses checked while realizing exactly WHO the Hawkeyes are and who they are NOT.
Iowa is a slow-paced, methodical team. As James Franklin said, the Hawkeyes don't run uptempo. They "Iowa" people by playing their slogging, boring, conservative style.
I will admit that, yes, I have seen some teams around the country employ the tactics of faking injuries to slow down a fast-paced offense. Some of the instances can look really bad and even comical.
Not a single instance of the Penn State injuries Saturday fit that description. The Lions not only lost five players to injuries in the game -- so they actually were dealing with a big injury issue -- the other guys who went down to the turf are some of the team's best defensive players.
It's completely idiotic to think that Penn State wants guys like Arnold Ebiketie and Jaquan Brisker to go to the turf, fake injuries and then have to miss plays.
Oh, but Ferentz said those guys came back into the game a few plays later. That sort of thing happens frequently in football, where a guy gets dinged, needs a quick breather and gets back out there.
Iowa fans and assistant coach Woods felt Ebiketie was faking an injury on the following play. That's when Woods fell down on the sideline, acting like he was injured. They all felt like Ebiketie was fine.
But check out the second video -- which is the play BEFORE. Clearly you can see Ebiketie (17) hobbling after getting knocked to the ground. So it completely shoots down the theory that he was just faking it on the next play.
Here’s one play earlier. I can understand frustration but defending the booing after the fact, and presenting it like this, is lame. No one should boo injuries. Give the athletes more credit. Respect goes both ways. Good win Hawkeyes, hope we see you in the Big 10 Championship. pic.twitter.com/Qq3femgOlG
— • (@dc2bk) October 11, 2021
Ferentz says his fans aren't stupid because they saw what was going on. Well, maybe they should look a little closer.
Is it possible that, at some point, Franklin and Penn State have indeed had a player go down faking some minor injury to slow a team down? Yes. It's possible. We have no idea what's going on on every play.
But I have never seen an occurrence where it was blatant or obvious. And even if Penn State did have that in its bag of tricks, the Lions wouldn't need to use it against Iowa, of all people.
Ferentz and the Hawkeyes need to be realistic about who they are, and realize that teams don't need to try and slow them down. The Hawkeyes do that plenty well enough themselves.
The last thing I'll write about this junk is that, hey, it has fueled what already was a pretty neat little rivalry. Penn State and Iowa have played a bunch of weird games over the years, with some fluky stuff happening from time to time.
For one team to flat out accuse the other of essentially cheating while also condoning fans booing injured players not only is classless, it also will help make this rivalry even more intense.
Because don't think for a second that Franklin and Penn State will forget about all this nonsense any time soon.
