Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Reaction to Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa football advisory committee news plus Tyler Linderbaum declares

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Iowa Hawkeye All-American Tyler Linderbaum declaring for the NFL Draft and both the men's and women's basketball teams getting wins was overshadowed this weekend by a Gazette article about Kirk Ferentz disbanding the advisory committee he formed after the 2020 racial bias allegations. We break down the different components of that story on the Iowa football team, and give you are opinions. Easy enough to say, but there is more to this story than meets the eye.We head into segment two detailing Iowa's win over Minnesota led by another superb game by sophomore forward Keagan Murray before diving into Tyler Linderbaum's decision to declare for the NFL Draft and what his draft stock will be.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.NetSuiteOver twenty-seven thousand businesses already use NetSuite and RIGHT NOW through the end of the year NetSuite is offering a one-of-a-kind financing program to those ready to upgrade at NetSuite.com/LOCKEDONNCAA. 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 a Monday morning episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes Podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Podcast Network. As always, I am your host, Andrew Wade, and we have quite a few things to cover on today's show. Before we get to any of that, though, I want to thank you all for making the Locked On Hawkeyes your first listen every single day. You can find us wherever you get podcasts at and also on YouTube by searching LockedOnHawkeyes.

And today's episode is brought to you by Sonos. Experience the game like never before with Sonos Arc, the premium smart soundbar for TV, movies, music, gaming, and more. Visit Sonos.com to learn more. And on today's show, we have to cover the interesting article that came out from the Gazette. We're going to be breaking that down step-by-step, what kind of happened, what went wrong on both sides, and kind of what our thoughts are. We're covering that first on the show today. Then we're going to get to the news.

Tyler Linderbaum declaring for the NFL draft. What does that mean? What is his draft stock? Then finally, we're going to get to the Iowa-Minnesota game, giving you a review of that. We have a new format to discuss that. So a lot of great stuff coming up on the show today. Let's get right into it, though, because we have a lot to cover with this news. And if you haven't heard this stuff yet, I'll be honestly a little shocked.

But I do want to make sure we're giving you all the information that is relevant to this discussion. So to kind of break it up first, so the Gazette posted an article yesterday, co-written. The main person to be aware of is Vanessa Miller. You all might remember Vanessa Miller. She likes to write an article once or twice a year in some way, shape or form criticizing Kirk Ferentz for a variety of things. So what happened was Kirk Ferentz in an email to his advisory board committee of former athletes there to kind of help make sure the direction of the program is going the right way, which is all kind of part of the fallout of the 2020 racial bias allegations. He said, I have come to a decision that this is an appropriate time to dissolve our committee

as it stands currently. As we start a new calendar year and prepare to move forward with our preparation for the 2022 season, I am giving thought to how we restructure the committee board in a way that best serves our program moving forward so as you can see there he is not disbanding it and not starting a new one he is trying to figure out a better direction and as we get a few more details we'll understand why and i'm going to give you those details here in a second but the headline read it kirk disbands the group and then even the tagline they put in their tweets basically alluded to that as well so in my opinion a little bit poor journalism on their part so what happened david porter who's a former iowa offensive lineman played under kirk early in the 2000s he is the chairman of offensive lineman, played under Kirk early in the 2000s.

He is the chairman of the committee. He said there was a contentious meeting on October 18th. He had asked the question a month in advance and said, what is your role in creating a more diverse, equitable, inclusive environment, and what have you done to foster this? This meeting that was supposed to take 30 minutes lasted two to three hours. It was coming during a bye week, and Kirk, prior to this, had tried to push this meeting out because his team had gone through seven straight weeks of playing football, and he wanted to give his coaching staff a little bit of a break.

Apparently, it got a bit contentious. Some people didn't come with answers. Some people didn't give the best answers in their opinions. Some people didn't come with answers. Some people didn't give the best answers in their opinions. David Porter then went and suggested via text to the committee that it was time to bring in a new head football coach, a football staff and athletic director. He also went on to say that Ference is loyal to a fault and will fall on the sword for his son and his staff because he's the right thing to do. I disagree. The only way to protect his legacy, protect the program, help those kids, and continue to move forward at the same time as for Kirk to retire. Okay, so that's a little bit, so that's a lot of information to unpack.

So, again, we'll start with the Kirk stuff. Kirk, and actually there's one more piece. So then what's really important about this article is the fact that they only reached out to David Porter. David Porter seemingly was speaking on behalf of the committee. The committee made up of a bunch of different people, including Jordan Lomax, Colin Cole, a couple others that we're all very familiar with, Robert Gallery. And Matt Bowen is another one. We're all very familiar with Robert Gallery, right? So, and Matt Bowen is another one.

Jordan Lomax started speaking out on Twitter and he said, instead of being so quick to write an article, you guys should have reached out to the other committee members for their thoughts. This is a one-sided article and only David Porter's opinions, which I and others disagreed with, were shared. So the important piece of this, it was an opinion piece from David Porter, right? He gave his opinions on what he thought was going on. And Vanessa Miller and John Seat took that as fact or took that and ran with it with their journalism, posted an article that essentially was very one-sided, smeared Kirk to a degree without literally listening to anyone else.

When you look at that, the optics are not good. It looks as if Kirk Ferentz didn't like that they were asking for more progress from a DIE perspective. But if you dig deeper, there's a lot more to the story. And it doesn't mean that he was not doing what they wanted to. It doesn't mean that Iowa was not progressing. It means that one person out of a committee did not agree with him. That person happened to be the chairman. Now, it is important, I think, going forward,

that Kirk Ferentz does come up with a proactive plan to restructure this committee and has clear guidelines of what he expects from that committee. But again, the willingness of some journalists, and not just Vanessa Miller, I've talked about her a lot, but others who are Iowa beat reporters, and you all know who I'm talking about, to immediately assume the worst of the situation is absolutely ridiculous. Jordan Lomax went on to say, I think it's important to hear from the players regarding the improvements as well. We've heard from these players over the last two years of what has improved,

what has gone better. We've seen them show a little bit more personality, which is definitely exciting. A lot more fun to understand the ins and outs of these players. But to me, I think this really comes down to either one or two things. I think it's Brian Ferentz. They clearly have an issue with, and I think it's not just the off field. I think it's the on field. And for David Porter to suggest that the head coach, the athletic director, and the entire

coaching staff is let go is not the place of the committee, in my opinion, to try to or recommend basically getting rid of that entire group. Now, what I would like to see is the minutes of these meetings as well, especially the October meeting. I would like to know if there was more context behind those text messages. Was it because he felt like they were not improving the program in the right way from a diversity, equity, and inclusion perspective? And was that something the committee agreed on? What did the other committee members feel?

Clearly, Jordan Lomax did not feel that way. Or was it a performance thing? Were they sick of Brian Ferencz's offense? Is that an issue? To me, there just wasn't enough information to write an article here unless your goal was to try to make Kirk Ferentz look bad. Especially coming off the original topic of the day was going to be about Kirk Ferentz's new deal that he signed. But here we are. We're not talking about the new deal anymore.

We're talking about Kirk Ferentz and another controversy started by the Gazette. It's unfortunate. This is going to continue to happen. It's unfortunate that the Gazette employs people who are unwilling to go to the full lengths of their journalism or to the full lengths of what they need from a journalism perspective and get all the right sources. Now, Kirk Barron declined to talk to the Gazette,

which I think is a bad look. He should have talked to the Gazette. But if they're writing a piece like this, now, I've done things like this not from a Kirk Ferens perspective or even a Vanessa Miller perspective, but I've had at my current job where the news has reached out before and seemingly they have a direction they want to go. They have an opinion they're trying to take and everything you say they twist in the wrong way so maybe that is what kirk ferentz is trying to do doesn't want them to twist anything he'll come out maybe a press conference later on but just a very frustrating article overall from the gazette um i would love to hear more from

other committee members i would love to hear from current players as well and i would love to hear david parker he's going on the radio as well to speak a little bit more about this, to why he truly thinks Kirk Barrett should be gone. If Kirk Barrett is not making this program a diverse, equitable, inclusive place, then yes, there needs to be some really hard conversations. But at this point, all we have is straws that are being grasped at, little pieces of hay that are being grasped at out of a barrel of hay from vanessa miller and the rest of these reporters who are reporting on this coming up we're going to be talking about the iowa versus minnesota team uh the minnesota basketball game that happened yesterday iowa getting a win after

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Use the promo code LOCKED15 for 15% off at Bilt.com. Again, thank you for making the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast your first listen every single day. You can find the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast for free wherever you get podcasts at and also on YouTube by searching Locked On Hawkeyes. So as we talked about, we talked a little bit about the Kirk Ferens controversy that just came out. My opinion is we need more information. We need more information on what is happening, but the article was incredibly one-sided and was not done with the best intentions,

in my personal opinion, based off the history of the people writing that article. So as we get more information, we'll make sure to break that down this week. Before we get to segment two, covering the Iowa-Minnesota game, I want to let you all know there will not be an episode on Friday.

My whole family is coming in town. We have a baby shower. We're all, to be fair, we're all getting tested for COVID before they all come in, but we're doing a little baby shower for my wife, so I will not have the opportunity to post a show on Friday, but we'll be giving you breakdowns of the upcoming basketball games this week. We also have a lot of stuff to cover from a Tyler Linderbaum perspective and a Kirk Behrens perspective. Now, speaking of Tyler Linderbaum, Tyler Linderbaum does declare for the NFL draft. And to be honest, that was expected.

But we're going to cover that here in a few short moments. Let's get to that Iowa-Minnesota preview, though, or review. Minnesota came into this game, Iowa on the road. Minnesota came into this game playing shorthanded with only seven guys not on the COVID list or injury list. And actually, before we – sorry, I keep backing up. We're going to be breaking down reviews in three sections now. So we're going to be doing a recap first, the takeaways,

and the impact all in that 10-minute slot just to kind of have an idea of what to expect. So Minnesota playing shorthanded with seven guys not on the COVID list or the injury list. Minnesota got off to a nice start the first couple minutes, but Iowa got off to a great start overall in the first half, doing a fantastic job on the boards. I mean, there was one possession where Iowa got four or five offensive rebounds.

Those are the kind of possessions that absolutely kill momentum for the other team. It is humiliating. It is just not good, right? It's just not a good start for the opposing team that you're getting those rebounds for. We've seen it happen to Iowa. It was good to see Iowa do it to Minnesota. Now, the interesting about this game is that at the 11-12 minute mark, Iowa fans were very happy. Like, yes, we're going to get a W. It's a great win. What a good thing for Iowa to come out really hot and get a 20 to 25-point win. They went on to blow a huge lead. In fact, Minnesota went on a 19 to 4 run at the 8-minute mark to the 2-minute mark

in the second half. Now, kudos to Minnesota for not giving up despite all the adversity they had to face without having half their team on their bench their bench and Iowa to their discredit their offense completely stalled out there was no more attacking it was some of the worst offensive sets I've seen literally just throwing the ball around the perimeter now I know the goal is to keep doing that until you can kind of get an open look but you have to also toss it inside to fill up a bracha, let guys collapse, and then find an open guy, not just continually pass it around, and especially to guys like a Joe Toussaint and a Patrick McCaffrey, who are not the world's best three-point shooters. Patrick McCaffrey has a stroke, and he can get hot, and he is not terrible, but that was a terrible game plan, just to keep passing around the outside, and then finally, Keegan Murray said,

nope, I'm going to take this ball. After Iowa, again, had that 19-4 run, or Minnesota had that 19-4 run, Keegan Murray went up, grabbed the ball from, I believe it's Tony Perkins, and shot a three, hit the three, gives Iowa a six-point lead. Iowa goes on to win after Jordan Bohannon closes out with a few free throws. In this game, not exactly the prettiest game from a shooting perspective. Iowa shot 23% from three, but they did out-rebound Minnesota 15-7 on offensive boards, 25-24 on the defensive boards, and they forced 14 turnovers and five blocks.

Now it's wild to me that this defense struggles so much when they do such a good job of creating chaos and getting out in transition, but nevertheless, we'll hopefully see Iowa's defense continue to improve in some of those half-court sets. Iowa does win 81-71, and Keegan Murray finishes with 25 points, 10 boards, 2 blocks, and 2 steals. The three main takeaways from this game, Connor McCaffrey did sit out in this game, had a back injury,

didn't want to hurt it, basically just sore, felt like the rest was more important. So he's going to be back in good time. Phillip Bracha feels like he's coming into his own. He kind of struggled initially. He's had some difficulties with some big men. But the last couple games, he has really come into his own, being a very active defender, staying out of foul trouble,

and getting points and being aggressive down in the paint. 12 points on 6 of 10 shooting, plus 12 boards, 3 steals, and 2 blocks. We need Phillip Aracha to be able to put up 10-10. We need him to be active on the boards, boxing out. And I thought Iowa did a great job of collapsing on Lagasse this game. Phillip Aracha was boxing out and when he couldn't get the board, Keegan Murray was coming in. Patrick McCaffrey was running in. Chris Murray was running in. So the rebounding seems to be getting better. We'll see how that all plays out as Iowa gets more into the tough part of their schedule.

Also on that note, we all know this, but Keegan Murray is the dude. He's been putting up those numbers, and a lot of people are wondering, can he do this in Big Ten play? Well, he has been doing this in Big Ten play. But what really impressed me in this game was his cold-heartedness ability to go get the win. He knew what he needed to do. He knew what he needed to do as a leader. He stepped up, got that three, gives Iowa a six-point lead, goes back on the defense side of the ball, and gets a block as well. This is a guy who should be the frontrunner for National Player of the Year at this point.

As far as the impact of this game, this was a Q1 win for the Hawks. So Minnesota is 69th on the road, anything up to 75th in net ranking gives you a quad one win. It is Iowa's only quad one win. You might be wondering, well, Andrew, Indiana was a quad one win. It was until Indiana dropped to 34th. So right now, the only quad one win for Iowa is Minnesota. We obviously want Indiana to keep winning. That way Iowa's win over them can look a little bit better. On the road, Iowa goes against Rutgers here later this week.

It's another must-win game for the Hawks. This is part of the schedule. You have to win those games you should win. We haven't seen Iowa always do that in the past. So Iowa vs. Rutgers, a must-win game. But at this point, Iowa moves to 13-4. I want to quickly shout out the Iowa women's basketball team as well, taking down Nebraska for the second time in as many weeks.

They are now rolling. They have a couple tough games coming up on their schedule. We'll make sure to break all that down here on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. But the women's basketball team, after our conversation on the podcast about is this team going to be good this year and can they figure it out? It seems like they are starting to gel. They're starting to get into their groove after a few early season slip-ups, which is very exciting for this women's basketball team.

Coming up, we're going to talk a little bit about Tyler Linderbaum and give you the plan of attack for the rest of the week for covering the Tyler Linderbaum news. Before we get to that, though, BetOnline would like to wish you a happy new betting year as we continue our march to the playoffs and beyond. BetOnline remains number one spot for all the best sports wagering action for 2022. And with a new year and a new updated desktop and mobile website comes a fantastic offer for you all today. You can go to that new website and sign up today and you'll receive a 50% welcome bonus on your first deposit.

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Tyler Linderbaum does declare for the NFL draft. It was not an easy decision for him, but it's something that we all expected him to make. When you are potentially a top 15 NFL pick, and you could go down as one of the highest drafted centers in the history of the NFL, with guaranteed money up in the 20 millions, you have to take it. I feel like it's the exact same situation we ran into with TJ Hawkinson. TJ Hawkinson wanted to stay at Iowa. I think Tyler Linderbaum wanted to stay at Iowa. But at the end of the day, when the NFL is calling to that degree, you have to go. You have to run for it.

You have to grab that money while you can. You can always come back to Iowa and get your degree. You can always come back to Iowa and work out with the team. You can always come back to Iowa and be a steward for the program. And I think it's important that with Tyler Linderbaum leaving, we give it the coverage that it deserves. And so throughout this week, each day, we're going to be talking a little bit about Tyler Linderbaum in a different angle. On tomorrow's show, we're going to be talking about how do we replace him?

Who replaces Tyler Linderbaum? On Wednesday's show, we're going to be talking about where does Tyler Linderbaum fall on the Mount Rushmore of Kirk Lyman? So we're trying to make sure we give you the appropriate coverage for Tyler. But first on today's show, we want to talk a little bit about the draft and where his stock is. Well, first off, he just won the Remington Award as the nation's best center. The Remington Award is the first one in Iowa history. So kudos to Tyler Linderbaum winning that in Lincoln, Nebraska this weekend. And when you look at the draft, it's kind of a mix, but mostly anywhere from the early mid-round,

mid-first to the late mid-first. And what I mean by that is basically the 8-22 range. Matt Miller of NFL Draft Scout has him going at 10th to the Jets. The draft network overall has Tyler Linderbaum going 14th. Kyle Krabs of the draft network has him going 15th, and Joe Marino has him going 22nd to the Dolphins. I've basically been seeing him mock the Jets, Dolphins, and Eagles, most of those three teams. Now, what's interesting about Tyler Linderbaum is that he is going to test pretty well. You have no doubt about that. His tape has been phenomenal. His character is upstanding and

one of the best you're going to see. He's a great leader. The only issue I could see pushing Tyler Linderbaum down the board, there's two of them. The only two issues I could see pushing Tyler Linderbaum down a draft board is if there is a run on quarterbacks or if teams truly just don't value that center position the way we think they don't. Centers are not typically top 10 picks. Centers are typically not top 15 picks. picks. Centers are typically not top 15 picks. So it depends on how a team values a title underbomb. Teams don't typically value tight ends as top 10 picks, but we saw TJ Hawkinson go. We saw Kyle Pitts go. Teams don't typically value any more running back to the top 10, but we saw Saquon Barkley go, Christian McCaffrey. So there's still, there's always anomalies in these kind of general rules of thumbs or cases where it's kind of gone against the precedence. So there's an opportunity there,

but the biggest thing is quarterbacks. Because right now this is not a very top heavy quarterback class. There's a lot of good quarterbacks. There's potential NFL starters at quarterback, but at this point, we don't know where these quarterbacks could go. And a lot of good quarterbacks. There's potential NFL starters at quarterback. But at this point, we don't know where these quarterbacks could go. And a lot of these mock drafts don't have a lot of quarterbacks in the top 10. But as we know by watching any of the last couple drafts, quarterbacks slowly rise to the top. Baker Mayfield was not considered the number one overall draft pick early on in his draft process.

With a good senior bowl, he rose right on to the top. There's a lot of guys who were talked about as potential first round picks. You look at Kenny Pickett, Malik Willis, Desmond Ritter, Sam Howell. There's others I know I'm just blanking on the top of my head with, but there's a lot of guys in this class who project honestly as late first, early second round picks. But with quarterbacks, if you're a late first, early second, you want to get those guys before other guys do. And typically that'll bump you up in the draft process. So you might be significantly lower graded than Tyler Linderbaum, but you might be drafted ahead of Tyler Linderbaum by a quarterback and AD team team. Now when you look at these three teams that are

pulling for a center potentially, New York Jets, an Eagles, or Dolphins, theoretically they are all set at the quarterback position. So you don't need to worry about them not drafting a guy. It's a matter of do they fall back in the draft because a quarterback needy team wants to come up and grab another guy. So really I think the range is probably that 10 to 20 range. I can see him going 10th through 15th, though, is kind of my projection at this point. I think that nothing higher than the 10th pick. I would be shocked to see Tyler Linderbaum go above the 10th pick simply due to positional value and where we ultimately always see the quarterback position line up and fall and come draft day.

That'll be it though for our show today. If you want some betting advice, I highly recommend you check out the locked on bets podcast hosted by your boy Q and handicapping expert, Lee Sterling of Paramount sports. They do a great job of breaking down three to four games every single day and giving you who you should bet on at bet online at. I just checked that out.

Again, that will do it for our show today. We will be here Monday – it is Monday. We'll be here Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week, no episode Friday, giving you more coverage on the current fairness news, giving you more coverage on Tyler Linderbaum, and also breaking down the upcoming games for the Iowa basketball team. That's all coming up on this week's episode of the shows. Have a fantastic Monday, y'all.

And as always, let's go Hawks.