What Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said about facing Tennessee in the Citrus Bowl

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz on Sunday night held a conference call with reporters to discuss the 16th-ranked Hawkeyes (10-3) being selected for the Citrus Bowl against No. 21 Tennessee (8-4) on New Year’s Day in Orlando.

Here’s what Ferentz said on the call:

What Iowa has seen from Tennessee and Josh Heupel’s uptempo offense

“Yeah, we certainly haven’t seen them this year and, but I know the work that Josh has done, both obviously at Tennessee and then Central Florida before that. Just outstanding. We have, coincidentally, we saw that Tennessee the last two years against Kentucky. We played Kentucky two straight years. So we do have some familiarity, but certainly weren’t looking at them from a game-plan standpoint. Nice thing about playing on January 1st as well. Plenty of time to look at them, but I’ll go back to my first experience playing Tennessee. It was 1982 in the Peach Bowl, one guy, I remember that, Reggie White … Willie Gault. Some pretty good players. We had a great game with them and, you follow them through the years just, you know, a really good program. So it’s gonna be a big challenge for us. We know that.”

How extra practice time leading up to the bowl games will benefit Iowa players, how to balance getting younger players more involved in bowl prep

“It’s really, really valuable, really important. And the one thing I’ve always said though, the most important thing about a bowl game is the experience for the players. And it so happens we’ve been very fortunate, my 34 years here, quite frankly, we’ve always had good opportunities to go to great bowls and really nice venues. And I can tell you from experience going to Orlando, this will be our third trip overall, it’s just such a great place to host a bowl. And they do a wonderful job of the committee.

And a big part of the bowl experience is what the committee does to set things up for the players. So that’s huge. And you want the players to earn really enjoy it because they’ve earned the right to be there. That’s still the concept of a bowl game. 

“Second thing on the list in my mind is just, it’s an opportunity for us to be together for another month and operate as a team. It’s a very different schedule than what’s been the last 14 weeks, a little bit more like a bye week schedule, I guess, in some ways at this juncture. But it’s just an opportunity for us to continue to operate as a team, and that’s the best part about sports. And then to break it down a little further, we’re kind of on our two tracks right now. The early part of the month, we were really working lightly with the older guys. They don’t need to have shoulder pads and have contact here for a couple weeks, need them to just kinda recharge a little bit and just get back to a refreshed mode if you will.

“But we’ll get a chance to work with the younger guys that have been flying on Saturdays and don’t have that volume of work built up. And for a program like us, where we lose a guy, quarterback’s a good position. We don’t have guys stacked up that were five-star recruits or have three years of game experience. So it’s really important for us to be working, as much as any opportunity we can on football. And that’s one nice thing about a bowl game. It gives you an opportunity to coach those younger guys, maybe guys that are on the look teams that we haven’t been able to coach, get hands on with that type of thing during the course of the season. So it’s a wonderful opportunity for everybody, and the whole idea for everybody in the program is to try to improve daily.”

Moving on from Iowa’s loss in the Big Ten championship game and getting the bowl invite the next day

“That’s a great point. Because every loss stings and if you’re a competitor, that’s just the way it works there. There’s no substitute for winning. There’s no substitute for losing, two different extremes. And one’s a lot better than the other. Typically if you lose a game, you don’t get good news on Sunday. And in this case, to your point, we got wonderful news today. So, yeah, I don’t wanna speak for everybody, but I think I can speak for everybody, should just be really excited about this. Again, you go into Orlando, great bowl committee that does a great job, great community, and you get to play a top-tier opponent.

“So it’s a great challenge on the that hand, great experience for our players. And we give the guys a couple days off, we’ll meet here in a couple mornings. And it’d be the first time we’ll get to be together, but I’m sure everybody would be really happy about that. And we’ll move our sites forward. We’ll move on to the next one, next challenge and try to be smart about the month.”

Iowa’s upcoming schedule leading into bowl prep

“We’ll probably go real light, Friday, Saturday. Just you don’t want the guys to go a couple weeks without getting on the field and doing some things. The older guys will be on and off the field, really like much, much like the bye week. And then we’ll work the younger guys a little bit more. Then we’ve got our banquet here next Sunday. And then we go into finals week. So we’ll be very, very limited during finals week and then start pretty much in earnest after the last finals are over.”