Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - More Big Ten realignment talk plus Kirk Ferentz sheds light on the Iowa football QB situation

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

It was another exciting 72 hours in conference realignment talk and rumors are swirling like wildfire. We dissect the rumors and give our breakdown of what should and shouldn't happen before diving into three key press conference quotes from Kirk Ferentz including one interesting one on the QB position.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are Locked On Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back, Hawkeye Nation, to another episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes Podcast. It is a Monday morning episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes Podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network. As always, I am your host, Andrew Wynn. Today's episode is brought to you by RockAuto.com. Amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need.

Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. We have a lot to discuss on today's show. As you all know, Big Ten Media Days were Thursday and Friday. We got a lot of good quotes from Kirk Ferentz, Tyrone Tracy, Tyler Linderbaum, and Zach Van Valkenburg. We're going to be breaking all of that down. We're going to get to some of it today, but most of it's actually going to come tomorrow because we want to talk about conference realignment.

I know if you listened to our Friday show, we talked a lot about it then. There was some additional news that came out in regards to conference realignment. And since this is such a, a constantly evolving topic, um, sitting on this per se would not be ideal because by the time, honestly, by the time you listen to this, it might already be,

be outdated. So want to make sure we're talking about that because it is a very big discussion point across the entire nation as teams try to figure out what are they going to do as conferences try to figure out what are they going to do, as conferences try to figure out what are they going to do. But I promise you, we will get to Big Ten media days either today or tomorrow. But getting into some of the conference talk, I went through a list of teams that I felt like would be really interesting additions to the Big Ten if the Big Ten were to ultimately expand.

If the big 10 were to ultimately expand. Now I didn't dive deep into the West coast because I didn't think that that was going to be an area that the big 10 was looking at, but with everything on the table at this point, I do want to make sure I cover that. And I also want to cover a few other things I've seen, um, uh, on Twitter, on Facebook, uh, talking to people. I want to make sure I'm just kind of giving my thoughts on all of it. First and foremost, with the Big Ten, there are several factors that comes into trying to decide what teams to bring in. They want an academically sound university, ideally an AAU accredited university.

Now, what I thought was interesting about this, I looked at that list and saw all the teams except for Nebraska. And I'm like, what the heck is going on with Nebraska? It turns out Hawkeye, Matt, if you aren't following him on Twitter, definitely do that. He made note to me that Nebraska was accredited at the time they joined the Big Ten, but since lost their accreditation. So they are no longer an accredited university due to they joined the Big Ten, but since lost their accreditation. So they are no longer an accredited university due to their medical school location. But the Big Ten strives itself on being not just an athletically sound conference, but also an academically sound conference. So it makes some of this a little bit more difficult when trying to identify

potential universities that match up. You need teams that are both academically rigorous and athletically rigorous. Now, the other thing I want to touch on is the fact that the SEC is clearly trying to make a power move here. They want to be the elite of the elite. I also believe that Oklahoma and Texas realize the Big 12 just isn't cutting it for them. Now, Texas, I don't completely understand, but Oklahoma, definitely. When you look at the past college world championships, they are struggling to be in that race despite going undefeated. If they lose one game, they're out. And so their thought probably is, let's get into the SEC

where we have a little bit better of an opportunity if we were to win in the SEC versus winning in the big 12. I also think this is the path that things are heading super conferences, large conferences. And I've even heard people spit ball that this is a move to, you know, basically do away with the NCAA, which I think is a little bit far fetched,

but definitely something interesting. I think when all is said and done, but definitely something interesting. I think when all is said and done, we are likely looking at either four super conferences or four very good conferences and one lackluster Power Five conference, which would undoubtedly be the Big 12. I do not foresee the Big 12 coming out of this

either intact or stronger than it was previously. The one thing the Big 12 has going for over another conference, such as the Pac-12, is the fact that the Pac-12's leadership has arguably been the worst in the entire nation. TV right deals are terrible. They aren't getting a lot of exposure. There's a reason why Christian McCaffrey didn't win the Heisman. It's because no one watches freaking games. So the Pac-12 has a problem on their hands,

but one that they understand and one that they can easily fix. The Big 12 has a problem on their hands. And it's the fact that no one wants to be a part of the Big 12. And they could go and get some other teams and bring them in. But is that going to make the Big 12 a Power 5 conference? I don't think so. I think it's going to ruin the Big 12 a Power 5 conference? I don't think so. I think it's going to ruin the Big 12 conference. Now, we've also talked a little bit about the ACC. The ACC has a very interesting position here because they have a very solid basketball school,

you know, basketball schools, I should say, whether it is North Carolina or Duke, even Virginia. Miami's been solid. Syracuse. I mean, across the board, the ACC is a good basketball conference. I would say probably the second best basketball conference in the nation. Football-wise, they haven't been cutting it, especially with Florida State being down.

Clemson is really the cream of the crop. And after Clemson, it's a significant gap. Look at Miami. Look at North Carolina. They're trying to get there, but they aren't there yet. Heck, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, the ACC was the best football conference. Remember those heydays?

Virginia Tech, Florida State, Miami. Those were some big-time football days. But since then, the football conferences, the ACC as a powerhouse football conference has definitely dwindled quite a bit. So the ACC has to figure out what they are going to do. They need to hold on tightly to Clemson from a football perspective and even Florida State from a legacy football perspective.

But I don't think they're in a very bad position. And this kind of brings me to my last thing before we get into some of the details of all this, which I think we're kind of doing right now anyways, is the SEC has added Texas and Oklahoma. Very prestigious football schools. They do have good basketball teams, pretty typically, but that is a football move. When the Yankees were going out and signing every big name player, people couldn't compete with them because they had more money than everyone else. Yankees were going out and signing every big name player.

People couldn't compete with them because they had more money than everyone else. The SEC, they have more power than everyone else when it comes to football. What teams did, they didn't try to compete with the Yankees by outspending them. They got creative and went different ways to beat them. Now, to the media, to fans, you might look at it and say, well, if it's not football, then why does it matter? But I argue to look at the other side of it is that, yes, we might not be able to compete with the SEC in football, but we need to make sure we stay as a number two in football. I think competing with, the only way we're going to compete with the SEC in football is if we add Notre Dame, USC, maybe Clemson, and an Oregon. You add those four schools, you just outdid the SEC. You don't add those four

schools. There's not a lot of schools you could add that would even get you close to outdoing bringing in a Texas and Oklahoma. I also feel like we're putting maybe too much weight on Texas itself because Texas has not been that good of a football program. But nevertheless, I think there is a different strategy or a different approach. If you aren't able to do that, you beat them in other ways. You can still be a very, very good conference. It doesn't mean that you have to have the best top-to-bottom football conference. I would also argue that Big Ten does have a very

competitive top to bottom football conference in comparison to the SEC. Yes, we don't have the Alabamas, but I think our conference can match up with any other team in the Big Ten or in the SEC, in my personal opinion. I do want to talk a little bit more about this. So we're going to cover this on segment two as well as I get into a few other schools that I think will be interesting for the Big Ten ad. So that's going to be coming up on segment two. Before we get into that though, you know I got to tell you about our sponsor of the show today. We have betonline.ag, the fastest and the easiest way to bet on all of your sports action. Baseball season is in full swing. You also got the Olympics and you can track all the action at betonline.ag. Got all the latest news, odds, and info for all of your sporting needs, including the MLB, UFC, Olympics, upcoming football, all at BetOnline.ag.

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And before we took a break, I was telling you about why I feel like maybe the big 10 doesn't try to compete head to head from a football school perspective, but tries to compete from a, a well-rounded perspective. And if they were to do that, here's the schools I think would be really cool. So I already talked about it.

Obviously if you've got a Clemson, a Notre Dame, a USC in Oregon that is how I feel like you could actually maybe beat the SEC at their own game but until then that is I don't I don't foresee that happening but here are some other schools I think would be really interesting that would not only I think make the Big Ten still be at that spot of powerfulness in terms of the Power 5 schools, probably leaving them at number 2 for football, but overall making them the number 1 conference. You get a Stanford,

USC or Oregon, I think Colorado actually would be a pretty good addition to this list as well. North Carolina would be a lot of fun, Notre Dame, Texas A&M would be very interesting, because if I'm Texas A&M would be very interesting. Because if I'm Texas A&M, I'm pissed.

This whole situation went around me. I left the Big 12 to get away from Texas and Oklahoma. I left to get out of their shadows. And now I have to play with Texas and Oklahoma again. And they didn't even ask me. If I'm Texas A&M, I'm pissed off. So maybe Texas A&M can come. also gotta look at the Virginia schools again I'm thinking let's not beat the SEC at that the Yankee game let's go the analytics game let's maybe go and be a better basketball conference with a very very strong

football aspect to it as well and also the. So here's some of the schools on the AAU list. Again, that is going to be a big piece of this puzzle, the AAU list that are big-time schools. Pitt would be interesting because they have that rivalry with Penn State. We got Stanford. Stanford would be a very big addition, I think, to the Big Ten and would fit in very well. USC also has some very tradition, rich history.

Duke is an AAU school. Go figure. I feel like Duke and UNC really are kind of, I just can't imagine them not being the same conference together, but Duke would be, be interesting. But football wise, they're just a terrible football program, but they have a lot of other incredible sports,

Texas, A&M, UCLA, Virginia would be, lot of other incredible sports texas a and m ucla virginia would be virginia kind of plays a big 10 style of uh basketball anyway so that'd be kind of interesting i i know people mentioned georgia tech georgia tech doesn't do it for me at all what do they bring washington could be interesting vanderbilt would not be a very good addition in my opinion they're already in the SEC.

Let the SEC have a crappy football team. They need one. UC Boulder is an AAU school. Again, UC Boulder has a great rivalry with Nebraska. I think UC Boulder could be a fun team to have in the Big Ten, expanding that reach into Colorado. A lot of Colorado kids are already coming to some of these Big Ten schools, expanding that market into Colorado. A lot of Colorado kids are already coming to some of these Big Ten schools, expanding that market as well.

I think the market already is pretty solid in Colorado, but still expanding it a little bit. And Colorado makes a bit of sense. It's not that much further from Nebraska. And personally, I would love to have some Iowa games at UC Boulder. You got Iowa State. Again, I'm not going to hate on the addition of Iowa State. It's going to reduce a non-conference game for Iowa.

I think Iowa State is, again, geographically centered. Iowa State is a solid program. If you don't believe that, then I don't know what you're looking at. Iowa State does have a solid football team now. They are up and coming. Basketball-wise, they're not going to be terrible forever. They have a solid wrestling program. Iowa State's a good university. Why not have them in the Big Ten? University of Arizona doesn't do it for me, even with some of the tradition-rich basketball history. Going down this list, you got Utah. No.

I think from a football, basketball perspective, they had some really good success as of late, but it's not a move that goes, wow, Big Ten guy, Utah. Same with, honestly, Kansas doesn't, I mean, Kansas from a basketball perspective would be phenomenal, but Kansas doesn't do it for me. UNC would do it for me. Going through this. That's pretty much University of Oregon.

Yeah. So if you can get some of those Pac-12 schools, maybe UNC. I think that is how you counter punch this. You don't try to go head on with football schools. You go head on with other sports and other pieces of the pie, in my personal opinion. So that would be what was really interesting to me. Again, it's not just about football. It's about everything. That being said, the Big Ten needs to hop on this stuff very quickly. Kevin Warren is an absolutely terrible leader, in my opinion, but he needs to be proactive about this. You don't want to be left in the dust sitting there wondering,

wow, could we have gotten these schools? No, go out there and get them now. Don't let someone else recruit big-time schools. You never know until you ask. Maybe these schools, maybe a USC doesn't want to leave, but you won't know until you ask. The other thing, maybe a USC doesn't want to leave, but you won't know until you ask. The other thing I would say, there's reports that came out that Kansas and Iowa State were already in talks with the Big Ten. Then there's another report that came out that they were not.

Here's what I will say about reports. There are going to be a lot of rumors floating around the next couple weeks until something is officially done. Everything and anything can be true and everything and anything can be false. is officially done, everything and anything can be true and everything and anything can be false. And there's going to be a lot of people out there trying to give their sources. And I'm saying that in air quotes. You can't see me now, but you will be able to when we get the YouTube channel lined up that pretend like they have sources that pretend like they know what's happening.

Oftentimes, it's just hearsay at this point. None of us really know what truly is going on, but the Big Ten does need to act fast. They do need to go grab some teams and they need to be ahead of the SEC on this. They need to counterpunch before the SEC finishes punching them. This is a very big opportunity for the Big Ten to capitalize on pandemonium and chaos amongst all the other conferences. The Big Ten is arguably the second most powerful conference after the SEC. Maybe the most powerful, but when you look at it from a football perspective,

the Big Ten is second. Basketball, they're one. Academics, they're probably one or two. You have to factor in the fact that you need to go get this stuff happening now because you better believe the Big 12 is on their heels saying crap we got to get someone the acc is like crap we can't lose our guys the pac-12 they realize they've screwed up a little bit before they need to keep all those schools there but also figure out how can they make these schools happy going forward so the big 10 needs to act and needs to act fast but again reminder that there's a lot of rumors that

are going to be floating around nothing is official until it truly is absolutely official from a source from the school or from the conference itself. There's going to be a lot of talk and we're going to make sure we cover it all here, but that does do it for segment two. Coming up on segment three, we're going to get into the first part of Big Ten Media Days. Kirk Ferentz spoke to the media, had a few kind of thoughts, and then we're going to get to on segment, or sorry, on episode two on Tuesday, we're going to talk about Tyron Tracy, Zach and Valkenburg, Tyler Linderbaum, and then Kirk's off to the side press conference. He said a lot more things there. We want to talk about that as well. That's all coming up tomorrow, but coming up on segment three, getting into that Kirk Ferentz conversation. Before we do

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right locked on in their How Did You Hear About Us box so they know we sent you. Amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need. Visit rockauto.com. And as I said before, we took a break. I did want to get into the Kirk Ferens press conference. We're going to cover this more on tomorrow's episode. Again, I wanted to talk a little bit more about realignment and what that all meant. But Kirk Ferens did speak to the media.

Then he had a side session as well. realignment and what that all meant. But Kirk Ferens did speak to the media. Then he had a side session as well. We'll be breaking down that side session and the press conferences from Tyrone, Zach, and Tyler on tomorrow's episode. But for today's episode, there was three kind of quotes I wanted to cover. He had a quote about realignment. He had some really positive things to say about Luke Lachey. And he also spoke about Spencer Petras. So we'll get into those. We'll read you the comment and then we will break it down. He said, on Luke Lachey, Luke's a guy we're really excited about in recruiting and now after having him on campus, we're even more excited.

He's done a great job. He's a young guy who is really developing quickly and he plays a position, speaking of depth, where we don't have a lot of depth, which we'll likely have a really quality tight end in Sam Laporta. But yeah, Luke's got great opportunity in front of him and we're really counting on him to help our football team this year. To me, this feels a lot like three years ago when Noah Fant and TJ Hawkinson were coming up. Noah Fant was getting a lot of love. TJ Hawkinson was a guy kind of waiting in the wings. And although Luke Lachey

is a year younger, although Sam Laporta is not getting as much hype as Noah Pham, I do believe Luke Lachey could have as big of an impact this year as Sam Laporta. I believe he could still catch 30 to 40 balls if Spencer Petras does make the steps and growth steps that we are expecting him to, that everyone has talked about him making. This offense is predicated on having two very good tight ends, if not three of them. Noah Fant and TJ Hawkinson dominated the Big Ten when they were playing together. Sam Laporta and Luke Lachey could do the same or even better, especially if they stay for another year.

Well, Luke has to, but Sam could stay for another year being a senior, being a true senior. That could be very much on the docket depending on how the season goes. But I'm really excited to see what Luke brings to the table as well as the next in line for Sam Laporta. And don't forget about Josiah Mineman and Elijah Elverton, both guys who are going to be big time contributors at some point in their Iowa Hawkeye career. Kirk also spoke on realignment.

Thought this was a really interesting comment. He said, I remember him talking about the impact of television, conference realignment, all these things. And I mean, he was talking about calculus three and I was in algebra one, basically. So I had no idea what he was talking about. And now we're seeing it and we've seen it through the years, just all the changes that are going to go on in college ball and have gone on. So again, nobody's got a crystal ball and that just popped out of midair, whatever, two days ago, I guess right now I'm just really not too focused on that. I'm just kind of thinking about August and our football team. But again, just from experience, nothing you know.

Never say never to anything right now in college football or whatever is going to happen in the future for sure. That was his comment on Kevin White and realignment. And the big thing here is, as I even said on segment two, we don't know what's going to happen until the dust finally settles. But we are witnessing another change in college football. The bombshell that dropped, that was just the first one. This happened a little under a decade ago where several bombs got dropped and all of a sudden conferences are expanding, changing. West Virginia goes to the Big 12. We got Texas A&M going to SEC country. The Big Ten adds Maryland and Rutgers and Nebraska, not all at the same time, but nevertheless,

it does change a bit. Pac-12 expands too. So expect there to be a lot more bombs that drop, and if the Big Ten wants to be looking down at the dust, they're going to need to make some moves very quickly. I haven't seen it with Kevin Warren. Everything I've seen is either reactive or wrong. So I'm not too optimistic about Kevin Warren's oversight here. I am excited that Barry Alvarez is going to be at least helping out a little bit, but I am still not

very enthusiastic about Kevin Warren's job so far as the commissioner of the Big Ten. I am a little bit more enthusiastic about Spencer Petras though, and so is Kirk Ferentz. He did have this to say. He said, the last 23 years, we've had a lot of success with first year starters I think back to bad Brad Banks in 2002 Nathan Chandler the next year and then Drew Tate the following year so we've been very fortunate in that regard and I think the big difference between Spencer taking over as a first year player versus those guys or anybody else since that time Spencer wasn't afforded the luxury of going through a spring practice as our starter or our normal preseason practice in the month of August so I think he did remarkably well considering the obstacles that he

had to overcome. And me personally, I thought that his highest, the best game I saw him play, or the most gratifying game as a coach was at Illinois, where he probably couldn't have played much more poorly in the first half and really put us behind the eight ball and then came back in the second half and played just tremendously well. A A couple things on that. We keep hearing this about spring practice not having it, how big of a deal it is. While I don't disagree, it makes me question how complex is the offense that Spencer Petras, who has been in the offense and has had spring practice before, was not able to feel comfortable, was not able to make reads quickly,

was not able to get the ball out of his hand quickly. After three years, we see people start their true freshman season and play better than Spencer Petras. Now, I'm not saying Spencer should be expected to do that. But he was a four-star recruit. He was a big-time recruit for Iowa. And not being able to do that out of the gate, we're giving a lot of... We're making a lot of excuses, I feel like. Now, that being said,

all I've heard out of the program, out of several players, out of the media days, is that Spencer Petras is doing some different things, and the players, the coaches are all very impressed with how he's taking the next steps as a leader and i've said this several times iowa just gets average quarterback play they could win the

big 10 if spencer petras is average they will win the big 10 i also believe based off of last year and the struggles he went through and the fact that we've talked about this before it was one of the worst first year starting performances of an Iowa quarterback. I went through a whole analysis of that statistically, and then obviously from a game film perspective, he had one of the worst years as a first-year starting quarterback in Iowa football history under Kirk Ferentz. If he does not improve early on, then we better be seeing Alex Padilla in.

We can't allow this to happen, especially those first few games, Iowa State and Indiana. If he struggles in both those games, I think we could see a switch. If he does well, then he's our quarterback for the rest of the year. That's it.

It's those two games. You get tough games up front. Spencer Petras needs to show up in those two games. If he doesn't, we could be seeing a change after that first two weeks. It'll be interesting to see, though, what improvements he has made and how his connection with Tyrone Tracy, Sam Laporta, and several others has improved going into the season.

That does do it for our show today. I hope you enjoyed the show. I hope you had a fantastic weekend, even. And just a reminder, we do have the Locked On Today podcast. Get all the sports news you need in under 20 minutes with the Locked On Today podcast. Host Peter Bukowski updates you on the latest news in every major sport with the help of our local experts.

Follow the Locked On Today podcast on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast app. And again, thank you all for tuning in. Appreciate the love, the listenership, and as always, the support. Have a fantastic day. And as always, let's go Hawks.