The Hawkeyes leader has made no secret of his feelings about the situation being easily avoidable.
THE Iowa Hawkeyes punched its ticket to Indianapolis two weeks ago after beating Illinois by two points at home. Not necessarily needing the win, they followed it up with a game-winning field goal on Black Friday in Nebraska.
They haven’t lost since a controversial call resulted in a punt return touchdown against Minnesota a month ago, so they enter the Big Ten Championship on a four-game winning streak.
But the Hottest are standing in the way of their first conference championship since 2004. Michigan Wolverines. Jim Harbaugh will be back on the sidelines in search of his third straight conference title after serving a three-game suspension handed down by Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti due to the Connor sign-stealing investigation Stallions.
Speaking to reporters Sunday afternoon, Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz was asked about the situation in Ann Arbor. He admitted that it didn’t really affect them when it came to match preparation, and he didn’t mind technology being readily available to prevent these situations from happening in the first place.
“If you want the big picture, this is something that could probably be fixed very easily,” Ferentz said. “Whoever has to come together just to vote and allow us to have different technology – we’ve been talking about it for maybe not a decade, but almost, and it would be a simple way to fix everything. I know baseball has had some issues, I think they’ve fixed that. We could have solved this problem probably ten years ago. But it’s like a lot of things have happened in the NCAA and in college football – we’re a very slow train when it comes to being progressive, trying to make things better, just trying to improve the quality of the game. So this kind of fits into that category. By Saturday, I’m not worried about that. But one of these days, maybe we will take the necessary steps so that this subject is removed from the debate and is no longer a subject for everyone.
Ferentz is on site. If the NCAA had integrated radio technology into players’ headsets, this whole sign-stealing investigation would never have happened. All levels of football except college use radio technology to communicate play calls. Instead, college coaches are responsible for coming up with hand signals to communicate what play is going to happen next.
The opportunity for radio communication has presented itself in college football over the years, but the main culprit because this is not implemented, college coaches no longer have the ability to steal signs. Everyone has a sign thief in their program, but not everyone has someone like the Stallions willing to go rogue in the program and do whatever it takes – even if it’s potentially in outside the NCAA rules – to win.
As for Michigan, Ferentz is aware of the challenge presented to his team next Saturday night in Indy.
“They look like the team we’ve seen the last three years,” Ferentz said. “They are impressive in all positions, extremely well coached and they have very good players. This is not a new phenomenon, at least not in my 34 years of playing Michigan. Bottom line, they’re really good up front on both ends, they’re good on special teams, the quarterback is playing great, so it’s going to be a total team challenge for us. We’ll have to, first of all, do our best to stay competitive through all of this, and then we’ll most likely have to find a way to try and get over the top at some point. They don’t look like they’re leaving the door open much, so it’s going to be a challenge, but that’s what you want from a championship game.
Ferentz didn’t name anyone in particular — it sounds like he hasn’t watched Michigan much this season, which makes sense considering the two teams didn’t play each other in the regular season. But Ferentz has a lot of respect for Harbaugh and the Wolverines, and it shows in his comments.
Michigan vs. Iowa for the Big Ten Championship is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. on FOX.
Learn more
