Iowa football: Five biggest recruiting busts in the Kirk Ferentz era

The Iowa football team has been great at finding diamonds in the rough, but they’ve also had their fair share of busts with top-end recruits. Here’s five.

More often then not, the Iowa football team does a great job of finding contributors in each recruiting class regardless of the number of stars assigned to the player. In fact, the Iowa football team doesn’t really recruit high-end four and five-star recruits often at all. There have been less than ten five-star recruits in the Kirk Ferentz era and each year, the Hawkeyes pull in 1-2 four-star recruits.

While the results of Iowa’s five-star recruits have been a mixed bag, there has also been a varying level of success with some of the other top-end recruits for the Hawkeyes. The reasons also very, to be fair.

Some of these guys couldn’t kick the injury bug, some of these guys couldn’t stay out of legal trouble, and some of these guys just couldn’t beat out other recruits at their position. Whatever the reason, these guys just couldn’t have a career with the Iowa football team that is comparable to expectations.

Here are the top five recruiting busts, excluding five-star recruits, in the Kirk Ferentz era.