Pat Forde Finds another Opportunity to Kick Iowa

By Sam Kienzle

Last week, I was as startled and concerned as much as the next Iowa Football follower to learn of the workout-related hospitalization of 13 Iowa Football players. I read player responses, reactions from all around the college football blogosphere, and reaction from UI officials.  I was—and am—upset that even one player was stricken with Rhabdomyolysis.  At the same time, my feelings of concern were accompanied by a sense that Iowa’s players are in genuine good health and that at times they practice under safe yet exhaustingly challenging conditions.

Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz addressed the critiques at a Signing Day press conference (photo: Liz Martin/SourceMedia Group)

Ferentz says the Iowa football program implemented the workouts in question in Dec. 2000, June 2004, Dec. 2007 and again in Jan. 2011.  He also said  the workouts will not be repeated.

A few days later, I ran into a friend on the streets of Iowa City.  I asked him his opinion on the hospitalizations and what lead to it.  He’s a graduate student and former player who today specializes in personal training and has extensive knowledge in sports medicine.  More importantly, he experienced the ins and outs of Chris Doyle’s strength and conditioning program.  He told me that he thinks there was more to the case than just over-exertion, and that this whole situation is most likely an aberration.  I felt my own opinion on the matter buttressed by his experiences within the program.  That didn’t insulate me from feeling the sting of criticism directed at the program from around the country—especially from one CBS Sports writer who mulls the idea of firing head coach Kirk Ferentz.

While reading outrageous articles such as the aforementioned piece, the back of my mind started to whisper, “Controversy within the Iowa Football program.  It’s just a matter of time before espn.com Senior Writer Pat Forde rides in on his high horse.”  Sure enough, a few days later, I was right.  Before reading, I already knew the tone Forde would take, that it wouldn’t be one defending Kirk Ferentz.  After reading, I opine that from afar, Forde is trying to spin a web of instances dealing exclusively with Iowa’s 2010 discontent.  The top-10 preseason ranking, the DJK situation, failed big ten championship aspirations.  All of these, somehow, according to Forde, inspired the grueling workouts—despite the fact that numerous players, including Christian Ballard and Julian Vandervelde, have gone on record to state that Ferentz and Doyle do not punish players with workouts.  And Forde’s criticism of Doyle’s “let’s separate the men from the boys” tactics does not hold water.  In 12 years as head coach with Chris Doyle leading the Strength and Conditiong program, never have I or others I know who closely follow the Iowa program seriously likened Ferentz’s philosophies on workouts, practice activities (and the relative level of hostility directed at the players by the coaches during practices), and leadership to those of the screamer coaches— of the Nick Saban, Dan McCarney, and Bo Pelini varieties.

Forde calls the 100 squats routine at Iowa “barbaric.” Barbaric, that’s a stretch of a critique but not completely dismissible.  What’s not a stretch, by any means, is to call these types of activities common.  Maybe Forde should sit in on one of Saban’s summer workouts in Alabama’s 100-degree heat.  I did, by virtue of ESPN’s televised special on the Alabama program before the 2010 season.  There, Saban and his coaching staff routinely denounced the players’ perceived need (or desire) for water.  They prohibited players from mentioning the word “hot.”  And scream? Yes they did.  Push them to exhaustion?  Crush their spirits?  Build them back up like a drill sergeant?  Yes, of course.  How close his players—or any other players under hard-driving coaches—have come to Rhabdomyolysis, we’ll never know.  That’s because hard driving coaches and assistants exist everywhere, at every level.  That won’t stop Pat Forde, though, from cherry-picking the publicized hospitalization of 13 Iowa players.  Despite the fact that these types of brutal workouts happen in football—and definitely in other sports—once there’s blood in the water, you can bet Pat will be swimming through it like a shark.

So really, in my humble opinion, this piece isn’t so much about the hospitalization: It’s about Pat Forde.  While a gifted sports writer, I cannot seem to read a piece where he refers to Iowa football without finding something disparagingly or mockingly written about the program.  If it’s not the routine jab at Ferentz’s salary, it’s the criticism of Ferentz’s late game decisions against Ohio State in 2009.  It’s the characterization of the 2009 team as a weak pretender when they were winning last-second games on the way to a 9-0 start.  It was the relentless jabs at Ferentz and the team during the struggling 2005-2007 years.  Even more ridiculous, whenever one might expect Forde to eat a bit of crow after an impressive Iowa victory (2010 Orange Bowl, 2010 Insight Bowl) and give a shred of credit to Ferentz, the words that follow are brief, if they exist at all.  If Forde’s not silent after a vindicating Iowa victory (and there have been many over the last three years), he’s criticizing the other team for being soft.  It’s never Ferentz who is the victor; it’s always the other team who is the loser—who gave the victory to these seemingly fortunate Hawkeyes.

I suppose that the injustice of an overpaid head coach is enough to motivate Forde to go after Iowa, even in instances when his foot is too wide for the space in the door.  It’s enough for him to recklessly and loosely attempt to take every flaw, mistake, and disappointment of Ferentz and the Iowa Athletic Department during 2010 and paint a mosaic of a dysfunctional program headed by a rich underachiever.  In Forde’s mind, every aspect supposedly lacking under Ferentz—whether it’s his last-second victories, his lead-footed players, or his predictable offense—is exacerbated by his big checks.  Because winning is easy enough, it seems.  Someone paid that well must win in style.

I understand the severity of the player hospitalizations.  I worry about their future health and their future football careers.  I would accept, although somewhat sadly, the firing of one of Doyle’s underlings for public relations’ sake.  I cannot, however, accept the unfair scrutiny dumped upon Ferentz by Pat Forde, even though it undoubtedly will continue.  Because even when I read CBS Sports’ fodder calling for Ferentz’s job, I categorize it as a radical opinion I vehemently disagree with, but not one that reflects an agenda.  Thanks for reading!

What do you think? Did Kirk Ferentz do enough? Are Pat Forde’s comments fair? Leave us a reply and get in on the conversation.