Jon Miller
|
August 27, 2024
Greetings, and I hope you had a great summer! But the calendar will soon give way to September, and if you close your eyes and listen to that small voice inside your head, you can hear John Facenda reciting The Autumn Wind.
No, we are not talking about pirates or Raiders here…we are talking football for everyone…and the music bed that NFL chose for the Autumn Wind voiceover is football crack…at least for Gen X and some Boomers…
Now, for a bit of house cleaning.
First, I look forward to dusting off the keyboard and writing about the Hawkeyes this fall for Iowa Everywhere. It’s been a while since I wrote a weekly column, and I needed a break. I feel refreshed and excited to tackle the task.
Second, I needed a break from post-game podcasting. The older I get, the more guarded I am with my time, and the Iowa Everywhere Network is GOING PLACES! A live, instant reaction podcast immediately following Iowa’s games is something people want, and that’s just not something I want to be tied to at this time. Who knows, maybe that will change one day, but for now. Chris Hassel and Andrew Downs will knock it out of the park and do a better job than I could, so I am happy to hand the reaction podcast over to them.
Third, Chris Williams and I will still check in here and there with some Miller and Williams episodes that cover a wide range of topics. What are those? I don’t know; we will let you know at the time, but they will be topics we are interested in, passionate about, and motivated to discuss.
When Chris reached out to me a couple of years back and asked if I had an interest in helping him launch Iowa Everywhere, I was incredibly excited for him and knew that something like this would work well in the state. My relationship with Chris is why I am here; it’s fun to be a part of a team, even with a minor role, but it’s even more fun to help out a friend.
Now, Iowa Everywhere is rolling. With the addition of Murph and Andy, the most popular sports talk radio show in the state of Iowa history, we add a tentpole franchise to go along with Two Guys (with Chris and Chris), shows that will carry the mail week by week. There are so many other great podcasts on this network that it’s hard to imagine sports fans in any state in the country having a better lineup from an independent media company to enjoy.
These are the reasons I still want to contribute to Iowa Everywhere and give up some time, in addition to being part of a winning team, to be a part of a movement in media and to do it alongside people I know, respect, and love. When I make choices like this regarding how I allocate my time, I ask myself a simple question: if I choose NOT to be a part of it, will I one day look back and regret it? The answer came quickly for me on this, and the answer was yes; I would regret not being a part of IE this year. So here we are.
Plus, I figured if the legendary Randy Petersen wasn’t ready to fully retire from writing about sports, I could probably crank out a column a week without sacrificing my other interests, and I am holding out hope for an Iowa Everywhere staff gathering in Vegas on Fremont Street with all of us, and no way would I miss something as epic as that!
Now, onto the Hawkeyes.
For the first time in his career, Kirk Ferentz is suspended from coaching and will miss a game, Iowa’s season opener against Illinois State this coming Saturday.
That stinks for Kirk, as I have never been around a more straight shooter when it comes to running a college football program. I mean seriously, if Iowa HAS been ‘cheating’ all these years, that makes the consistently poor offensive performances look even worse. So no, I don’t think Iowa runs a dirty program, and I suspect this was likely not a huge deal, especially in light of the lawlessness that is NCAA football since the advent of the transfer portal and, subsequently, the Name, Image and Rights opportunities for the players.
Notice I didn’t write student-athletes. I used to, but damn, was that a stupid thing to say. Yes, they are students, and yes, they are athletes, but it was a term the NCAA and its members liked to use to low-key remind us all of amateurism while coaching salaries and the facility arms race were going to the moon. It was the ultimate example, in college athletics, of Don’t Pee On Me and Tell Me It’s Rainingism.
The NCAA made and then shit in its own bed for so many years on this topic, and it did so brazenly. This led to the Feds getting involved, which was game over for the NCAA’s cash monopoly and exploitation of laborers.
Yes, I used to believe a scholarship was payment enough. I mean, I paid my own way through school and all. Then I grew up, and began to think more critically and logically, and look back on my old thinking as hayseed and foolish; in no other area of public sector society is a US citizen not allowed to profit off of their name, image and likeness. Not allowing them to do this is UnAmerican.
“But Jon, they didn’t have to sign the National Letter of Intent, which laid out rules of participation. There was an exchange of compensation for goods and services!”
How cute.
The NLI (not to be confused with the NIL) is an agreement between two parties: the NCAA member school and the players. The NCAA member schools put their heads together to create a set of rules they felt comfortable with; however, the other party, the players, had no say in said set of rules. If the NCAA is ever stupid enough to force the issue and try to win in court, this will be one of many areas where they will lose. This is why they are not going to allow the Feds to get involved again, which is why they agreed to video game and other NIL settlements in recent months and years and are doing all they can to appease the players and softly keep them from organizing into something akin to a Union where they will become employees.
But players aren’t dumb, and neither are the lawyers who are champing at the bit for some class-action cash. So the NCAA is holding fistfuls of cash in one hand, saying, “See! We will share!” while performing a sleight of hand with the other…well…hand.
This brings me back to Kirk Ferentz and his one-game suspension. It was self-reported, and the punishment was self-instituted. This is not surprising, as this has been how Iowa has handled a great many of its affairs through the Kirk Ferentz era…with a few very notable exceptions (The 2020 Racial Inequity Inquiry and The Rhabdo Stuff). Yeah, those are two pretty big caveats.
And I do hate some moral equivalence defense because when you play the moral equivalence card, it’s a tacit admission of wrongdoing or misconduct on your part, BUT HEY, THE OTHER GUYS BREAK MORE RULES THAN WE DO!
In this instance, the pile of dung from the Jim Harbaugh Era at Michigan is smelling up the entire Midwest. So if I were Kirk, I would be pissed off, especially since it was likely Michigan who did the snitching.
As it stands, Kirk won’t be in the complex on Saturday leading up to the game. Seth Wallace will act as interim coach, but Iowa won’t miss a beat, or whatever beat they were going to have for the opener, Kirk’s absence won’t change things. His players love him, and if anything, it may serve as another motivational chip on their shoulders, but that should not be needed against Illinois State.
Muck Fichigan and Ann Arbor is a whore…not that there is anything wrong with that, personal choice and all.
Tim Lester takes over as the fourth offensive coordinator of the Kirk Ferentz era. We have heard (and seen, on a smaller open practice scale) that some things will be different…more motion to distract the eyes of the defenders…different concepts and schemes, but from the same family as the concepts and schemes Iowa has employed for two decades.
Iowa could have hired Chip Kelly as its OC, but I would still be skeptical of real and meaningful change until I actually saw it. They did not hire Chip Kelly, but I am skeptical.
© Julia Hansen/Iowa City Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK
The painful reality is that Iowa’s offense just needs to improve to be below-average rather than the worst in decades, and they have a shot at making the inaugural 12-team playoff. The video cut-ups from Iowa’s Kid’s Day open practice were not encouraging. The play at quarterback looked too much like what we saw from last year, and last year can never, ever, ever happen again. It sounds like Cade McNamara has practiced better since then, but I will believe it when I see it.
And if they do improve, please don’t come back to me with a platter of crow because you saw the same things I saw last year, and there is simply zero excuse for that level of play out of a Big Ten Quarterback room. There is zero excuse, and it’s a recruiting and development failure not to have at least two capable Big Ten quarterbacks on your roster at all times, even in this era of the transfer portal.
(lowers voice to a whisper…are you confident Iowa has two Big Ten capable quarterbacks on the roster right now? I am not.)
If I had to make a simple request in the form of a slogan for Iowa’s 2024 offense, it would be simple; Just Don’t Suck, or JDS if you want an acronym (I hope I don’t have to use LOE as much this year, or Lack of Execution). But Iowa hasn’t executed the simple on offense for a bit.
I’ll see you again next week with some actual football Xs and Os to break down and discuss. I never liked the out-of-season when I wrote every day; this is the time of year when everything that could be said has been said. The last two weeks of August, after we had all emptied our tape recorders of interviews from the Big Ten and Iowa Media days, were the worst of times… because you were often just hammering out filler items.
I am at the point in this column where it’s Filler Time and not Miller Time, so I will see you next week.