Iowa football: Hawks approaching recruiting with class and dignity

If there is one thing that can be said about the Iowa football program, it’s they do it the right way especially when it comes to recruiting.

College football recruiting is quite a tricky game. You’re relying on teenagers to make arguably one of the most important decisions of their lives (up to that point), and based on that decision, could ultimately determine the success of your school’s football team. Not every single kid a school recruits will sign with them, but how do you accurately predict that to ensure the kid isn’t screwed in the process. Well, most schools don’t seem to worry about that but the Iowa football team does.

Every year we hear stories about a kid who’s “scholarship offer” was rescinded at the last second because a bigger recruit decided to join the program or how a school crossed the line with recruiting violations in order to draw in these big-time recruits to their program.

You know who’s name never gets brought up?

If you guess Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa football team, you would be absolutely correct.

The Hawkeye coaching staff is not going to sit there and butter up recruits. They are honest and upfront with recruits throughout the entire process.

As Kirk Ferentz noted in a December press conference right after the conclusion of the early signing period:

"I guess maybe we’re outdated, too, but to us, to make an offer, and I read an article this morning that referenced non-committable offers. I don’t get that, but I guess that’s a common term now. If we offer somebody then we’re serious about it, and obviously things can change. If you offer these guys at one position and one guy commits, that may be it, but we typically try to give guys that heads up that it’s one offer, we’re offered a couple guys."

He’s probably right. The Iowa football team’s way of recruiting is a little old school, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. In fact, quite the opposite. The way schools are going about recruiting today is wrong.

Just look at these scholarship numbers recently reported by Blair Sanderson.

You’ll notice quite a few familiar faces in the top-12: Nebraska, Michigan, Rutgers, Purdue, and Indiana.

The Iowa football team’s scholarship offers are all the way down at number 55 with 109 total offers on the table. For context that’s 300 less than Nebraska’s Scott Frost has offered. If every single recruit signed with Nebraska, they could fill an entirely new 100-man squad for four straight years. Granted, that’s not going to happen because it’s Nebraska, but you get the point.

What’s interesting about that whole ordeal is many recruits don’t appreciate that, or at least the recruits the Iowa football team targets do not.

Here’s a quote from the class of 2020 4-star quarterback Deuce Hogan when he was on Locked On Hawkeyes last month.

"I’ve been through the recruiting process with coaches who say ‘you’ll be the biggest dude here, we’ve got the best receivers in the country’. That’s not what I wanted to hear, but when Kirk Ferentz said, ‘You’re our guy, we love you to death, and we’re going to do something special. And if not, we wish you the best of luck’. That was so genuine to me and so refreshing. I left, and I got in the car, and I knew that was it."

The Iowa football may not always be in contention for a national title, but I would rather support a school that wins 8 games a year going about things the right way than a school that doesn’t respect the players themselves during the recruiting process.

Call me old-school, but I like the Iowa football team does it, and I always will.