Seth Wallace on his new title and returning LB's

While most of the attention on Tuesday was focused on a new offensive coordinator, Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz made another significant move. He had earlier announced that assistant defensive coordinator and linebackers coach, Seth Wallace, would be adding assistant head coach to his list of duties within the Iowa football program.

Wallace spoke to the media on Tuesday about this new position, his coaching path that started at as a graduate assistant at Iowa, and what it means to get back his starting linebackers for this upcoming season.

SETH WALLACE OPENING STATEMENT

Good to have everybody here, and thank you. We certainly appreciate it as a program. First off, I give a lot of thanks to Coach Ferentz for this opportunity. Obviously, very appreciative and excited about it.

This is something I didn’t expect. It’s not something that you work for. You just kind of go about your day-to-day and try to do as good a job as you can.

That’s evident maybe in the way that you all have seen me grow as a coach over the years. It started here back in 2005. It would have been December of 2005 — I had a lot of appreciation for this program. I grew up in Grinnell, Iowa. My father was a small college football coach, so I was always paying attention to football at that time, college football, and specifically to the state of Iowa.

I had friends that were Iowa State fans. I had friends that were Iowa fans. I was neither at the time. I was a son who was celebrating his father’s successes.

I had a little bit of background, but not a ton. Certainly that increased in December of 2005/January of 2006 when I picked up the phone and I had a mutual coaching contact that knew Norm Parker.

My love and admiration for this program began at that time when Norm called me up and then I later in January of 2006 became a Hawkeye.

In 19 years, I’ve been here for 14, but I did take a little bit of a break, and after I was a GA here for Norm and Phil and Coach, I left and went to Valdosta State and spent five years down there, and then as Coach mentioned, I came back here in ’14.

The big thing here is the operation that we have here, the people that are a part of this, the coaches that I have been around, that I’m around today, some of them have come and gone. Some of them have served as big mentors in my life, and I’m proud of that. I’m very proud of those that I’ve had the opportunity to learn from.

But probably more than anything is the players that we’ve had the opportunity to work with here. I go back to my time here in ’06 when I first showed up, and I was Norm’s GA but I was working positionally with Phil, and whether it was Miguel Merrick or Marcus Pascal then, where I’m working on the scout and we’re trying to clock Mitch King, Kenny Iwebema, guys like that from early on when I got here 19 years ago, I’m fond of those memories, and then certainly fond of the memories that have taken place here in recent years.

Like Coach said, I got back here in ’14, so this will be finishing year 10 being back here.

We’ve had some very notable players. I’ve worked in a lot of different capacities, so I’ve had the opportunity to recruit these guys as a recruiting coordinator, as an assistant D-line coach with Reese Morgan when I first got back here, I’ve worked with Phil in the back end, served as a linebacker coach. I oversaw our punt team, believe it or not, for many, many years.

So in a lot of different capacities I’ve been around a lot of good players and most notably some of the linebackers that have come through here, the Jewells, the Campbells, the Higgins, the Jacksons, Bensons, the Niemann brothers. There’s been a bunch, and I’m very proud of that. I’m proud of the opportunity that I have here. I’m very proud to be working alongside Coach Ferentz and this program, this university.

With that being said, I would tell you I’m probably a lot like the three linebackers that you witnessed this past year that all had the opportunity to leave. They all had the opportunity to go on and move on to different places.

I think there’s a lot that pulls you here. There’s a lot that makes you want to stay here. Because of that, I’m fortunate to be here, very happy to be here, and if it wasn’t for Coach Ferentz, if it wasn’t for Norm Parker’s phone call in January of ’05, I probably wouldn’t be standing up here.

Lastly, congrats to Tim Lester, who will be up here in a second, and then Beth Goetz on her appointment, as well.

Q. Seth, talk us through the conversations that led you to getting to this position this spring.

SETH WALLACE: Yeah, I don’t know that there were too many conversations, other than just an opportunity to sit down with coach. He pulled me aside a while back and said this is what he wanted to do moving forward. Used a lot of the comments and remarks that he used earlier. I wouldn’t say that there was a set of conversations or a process to this. It was more just a conversation and an opportunity.

To be real honest with you, I don’t see it changing a whole lot of my day-to-day, as Coach mentioned. My opportunity to be on the defensive side of the ball and continue to do what I’m doing there I think takes enough of my time, but this is certainly a welcomed opportunity, and obviously excited for it.

Q. Seth, can you take us through kind of how you saw the dominos fall with guys coming back on defense? Obviously Nick, Jay, a lot of other guys, just how was that all for you kind of seeing a bunch of them come back?

SETH WALLACE: Well, to be honest with you, Kyler was the first one. Kyler did have the opportunity to move on. He immediately came in and said that he was coming back, and then certainly the other two held on until the last minute.

Nick, of course, but Jay waited, and I think he did his research, and I think he spoke with those that he needed to in regards to his opportunity at the next level. He reached out. He called — same thing Nick did. It’s a breath of fresh air for any coach or for any program, for any side of the ball to be able to get back two guys that — certainly in Nick’s case, I don’t know that I was betting on that one happening. I felt like Jay we had a good shot on, but when you get both of them back, a combination of the three of them that started for us, it’s a pretty big deal.

Q. You’ve traveled the road. You’ve GA’d at a smaller college to this point. What does this mean to you personally as a kid who grew up in Iowa, to have the faith of a head coach like Kirk Ferentz?

SETH WALLACE: Yeah, I talked about the love and admiration. I think you can use those two words if you’re looking for a response right now.

The conversation that I had with Coach was — it was probably a real big moment, but really just knowing that — I grew up a coach’s kid, my father was a Division III coach, that was the path I felt like I was headed down, and I was good with it. I was okay with it, other than my mom kept reminding me, if you’re going to be at the Division III level, you’d better — no different now than what we’ve created in Division I, but the Division III level, it’s a tour of duty, and she kept reminding me that your wife better completely understand what’s going on here and she’d better understand what’s going on here in the current state because this is a little bit crazy what we’re dealing with in college football.

But it’s certainly not what I set out to do, but it’s a welcomed opportunity, and I think I’m very fortunate.

Q. We got to talk with Kirk and Tyler about these three linebackers coming in. I know they’ve all been committed for quite a while, all eastern Iowa kids. What are your thoughts on them, and what attracted you to them, and what are your expectations for their potential when they do get here?

SETH WALLACE: Yeah, I don’t want to pigeonhole myself in recruiting, but it was a little bit by design. I don’t know that you can count on three linebackers or three on the defensive side of the ball. I know you can count on more than three in the state being scholarship players at the highest level, and that’s a tribute to our high school coaches and what they’re doing in this state and the development and the type of kids we’re getting.

But to say that we were going to find three linebackers all within a 50-mile radius of Iowa City, and I don’t think that any of you would write a negative article on those three after being around them and seeing their storied high school careers because they’re all state champions in some regard, which is really fascinating when you think about it, and then they’ve all come through our camp.

We’ve had a firsthand opportunity to be around them, their families, but more so to vet them from a football standpoint or from an on-the-field standpoint, it’s a little bit unique. Not counting on it. I can’t talk about next year’s kids. You guys read about it or at least reached out to them this weekend.

Q. You were mentioning in your opening statement having opportunities elsewhere. What are the things that have kept you here and made this such an attractive place to stay?

SETH WALLACE: Yeah, I think there’s a want to be here. I wouldn’t say there’s a need to be here.

Where I’m fortunate and where I separate myself from a lot of other people is I’m from Iowa, my wife is from Iowa. My parents are around, her parents are around. Anything, any decision made beyond that would probably be pretty selfish on my part, and I might have to do it by myself, and I don’t want to do that right now.

But the way we play defensively, the success we’ve had here, and defense gets a lot of the notables, but Coach alluded to it, you can go back to nine years ago and you can see that we’re one of five programs that’s won 62 percent of their games or more a year. We’re not much like any of the other four.

There’s a lot that keeps you here, that you get a chance to win, you get a chance to coach good people, good players, work with good people, good coaches, good staff. It would take a lot to leave here for a lot of things, to be honest with you.

Q. Seth, along those lines, I know in this neighborhood, I think at least four different schools in the former Big Ten West have reached out to you, talked to you in different facets in the last couple years. What is your aspiration in the future? Not this year; we know what you’re going to do this year. But five, ten years down the road, do you want to be a head coach, and if so, is succeeding Kirk a step towards that in some regard?

SETH WALLACE: Yeah, I appreciate your question, and I don’t know that I’ve ever thought much beyond where things are right now. I think that’s always been — I was around my father growing up, and I saw him do it, and there were times where I got nervous of the potential that you could wind up in that type of position just because of all that it entails.

It’s not that I wouldn’t want to get there at some point. I just think it’s a byproduct of doing your daily job, and really that’s kind of all I’ve been about for the course of my career is just see how well you can do your job, where you’re at, and with those that you’re doing it with, and then the rest will take care of itself.

But there’s a lot that keeps me grounded. I get to work with Phil. I said he was an acquired taste a couple weeks ago, and some people have asked about that. Don’t ask me right now because I’ll pass on the answer because I don’t want to get into it. But having worked with him, having GA’d for him, having worked with him, I don’t claim to have much of an ego. I know we all do to a certain degree. There’s not much that I need other than just the opportunity to coach our players, make some suggestions in regards to what we’re doing defensively, and then turn the page the next day and keep doing it.

I think a lot of it just keeps me grounded. Opportunity to be around some really special people is a big part of it.

Q. You had a pretty good off-season in terms of returning guys that you really wanted to retain. Sort of the downside of that is you’ve got a lot of linebackers on scholarship, guys who are capable of contributing to this team. How do you manage a situation like that, especially with the scholarship count where it is right now?

SETH WALLACE: Yeah, I recognize that, and I would preference it as maybe an inconvenience, not a downside. We’ve got a lot of good players on our team.

The room that I’m responsible for is a foundation and a catalyst to what we do special teams wise, so there is opportunity there. But there are some guys in that room that have been waiting around for three, maybe four years for their opportunity, only to think that that opportunity was going to come available this coming year and then you have two or three guys come back.

So I do recognize it. It’s the ever changing world that college football is. They have choices to make. I would welcome their choices. I would give the two sides as best I could in regards to it, but at the end of the day, they’ve got to make some decisions, and I would say that is where we are fortunate. There’s not a ton that is good about the transfer portal, but there are kids that can leave now and maybe try to find a better situation if, in fact, they’re set on not being here.

That’s hopefully an answer that sums it up.