Iowa Hawkeyes Opener: Kirk Ferentz and Assistant Suspended—What It Means for the Team

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz and an assistant coach will miss the No. 25 Hawkeyes’ opener against Illinois State on Aug. 31 due to a recruiting violation. Both Assistant and Kirk Ferentz Suspended for next game.

Iowa athletic director Beth Goetz indicated Thursday that the suspension of Ferentz and wide receivers coach Jon Budmayr was voluntary. Seth Wallace, the assistant defensive coordinator and linebackers coach, was promoted to assistant head coach in early January and will serve in Ferentz’s stead for the Redbirds game.

At a news conference, Ferentz said, ‘There’s a line.’ In response to the journalist’s asking him whether he had ever slept with a man, he said, “I crossed that line. ”

Ferentz made the announcement to his staff and players about the penalty, which also consists of one week lost for off-campus recruiting, on Thursday morning.

“The bottom line is this: I tell our players that we abide by the rules,” Ferentz said. “In this particular case, I failed to do that. In this particular case, I have messed up on recruiting.

Ferentz is entering his 26th season at Iowa and his 196 victories are the third-most in the history of the conference. The Hawkeyes have won 10 games three of the past five seasons and got to the Big Ten championship game last year.

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Ferentz did not identify the player that was being recruited by the NCAA. The Athletic claimed to have been informed by an unnamed person that it was quarterback Cade McNamara. He joined Nebraska from Michigan before the 2023 season and played the first five games of the season but his season was cut short due to a knee problem. Speaking Thursday, Ferentz made it clear that McNamara is Iowa’s leading quarterback as they prepare for the opener.

Goetz said the NCAA told the university about the investigation of the Level 2 violation before this year, though it did not release information on the matter as the NCAA investigation is still underway.

Goetz described Ferentz as a man of good moral character but pointed out that in this case, as Ferentz stated, he made a wrong decision.

Ferentz said it was right to get the penalty now.

“This is the last thing we wanted to be dealing with for the next couple of months,” he said.

And it will be the first game in his tenure at Iowa that Ferentz will not be on the sidelines for. Ferentz said he intended to stay at home and watch the game.

“It is going to be hard to be away,” he had said. “Games are important,”  and “It’s going to be strange; it’s going to be difficult.”

The suspensions come in the aftermath of episodes that brought undesired attention to the Hawkeyes in the course of the last two years.

In early 2023, Iowa gave $4.2 million to address a racial discrimination suit from twelve former players a year ago who claimed that Ferentz and his staff made the team hostile to blacks.

During the previous summer, multiple Hawkeye athletes had been ensnared in a state law enforcement bust focused on college athletes betting on sports. At the midseason, Goetz said Brian Ferentz, Kirk’s son, would be dismissed as the offensive coordinator after the season ends.

In February, the university said it would self-report an NCAA Level 3 (minor) violation of tampering when a football staff member sent a text to Alabama offensive lineman Kadyn Proctor congratulating him after he had a bad game. Proctor is originally from Des Moines and was initially rated as a 5-star recruit upon signing with the college. He completed his transfer to Iowa in early January and returned to Alabama after two months.

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