It’s one thing to be dumb.
But it’s even worse to not know you’re dumb at all, let alone how dumb you really are — clueless, actually.
Ugh.
And so it was 33 years ago, in 1993, when a portion of the Browns beat writers — yes, including me, and I can tell you exactly where we were at Browns headquarters when it all happened — joked about the man who had just been hired as the team’s offensive line coach.
“The Browns have just swung the balance power in the AFC Central. They hired the head coach of the University of Maine Bears,” one reporter said.
And then we all laughed sarcastically and shook our heads. it might as well have been the Bad News Bears.
The name of that coach, who ended up working for the Browns for the last three seasons of the original franchise’s 50–year stay in Cleveland?
Kirk Ferentz.
Yup, that Kirk Ferentz, who will, in about a month, begin his 28th season as the head coach of the lowa Hawkeyes. He is the longest-tenured active FBS head coach, and is also the all-time winningest head coach in Big Ten history, having surpassed former Ohio State head coach, Woody Hayes. Yes, he outdid the great Wayne Woodrow Hayes.
Ferentz, who will turn 71 on Saturday, was part of the great group of coaches on the early 1990s Browns, along with the iconic Bill Belichick and Nick Saban, and also Pat Hill, who went on to a long, successful stay as the head coach at Fresno State. Though not an accomplishedhead coach, there was also Jim Schwartz, a low-level personnel staffer way back when who just might be the best defensive coordinator in Browns history, and Ozzie Newsome, the Pro Football Hall of Fame tight end who was the pro personnel director under Belichick and then moved on to another HOF-worthy career as the general manager of the transplanted Browns, the Baltimore Ravens.
Yes, what an unbelievable group, and Ferentz has earned the right to stand right there with all of them.
Ferentz and his Hawkeyes were among those profiled Tuesday during the first day of Big Ten Media Days in Chicago.
“I have had surgeries for my hip and my sinuses, but i still feel good. I don’t feel any differently, really, than I did 10, 15, 20 years ago,” he said during an interview on Sirius Radio. “I am still excited to do this job. When that excitement goes away, I will get out.”
And all of us covering that Browns on that long-ago day owe you an apology, Coach Kirk Ferentz, for being so dumb in not seeing in you what so many others did, including Bill Belichick, who rushed to hire you when there was an opening on his Cleveland staff.
Steve King
