Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz goes back a long way with Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio.
By Danny Payne
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INDIANAPOLIS — Kirk Ferentz remembers the grouper sandwiches, Mark Dantonio remembers the bumper of Ferentz’s car. Of course, Ferentz’s Hawkeyes and Dantonio’s Spartans will meet Dec. 4 for the Big Ten Championship. However, that’s hardly the beginning of their relationship.
The pair first met in the late-1980s when Dantonio was an assistant at Youngstown State under then-head coach Jim Tressel. Dantonio, who will coach his third Big Ten title game at 7:17 p.m., was on a recruiting trip in the Tampa, Florida, area. He didn’t know where he was going, so he trailed Ferentz’s car from school to school.
“I think we did that for almost two days,” Dantonio said. “I got to know him at that point in time. I just always felt like he was very grounded, wasn’t aloof, sort of said it the way it was. Obviously have a lot of respect for him as a football coach.”
Dantonio and Ferentz’s relationship didn’t end there. When Dantonio took over at the helm of the Spartans in 2007, he modeled certain aspects of his program — particularly in the trenches and using fullbacks — around what Ferentz had done at Iowa since 1999.
On the eve of his program’s first Big Ten Championship game, Ferentz took time to look back at his relationship with Dantonio. However, he remembers that trip for different reasons.
“I got introduced to grouper sandwiches,” the Big Ten Coach of the Year said. “Funny how the world turns around sometimes. However many years later this is, here we are in Indianapolis. No grouper sandwiches this weekend, though.”
Personnel updates
After suffering various injuries in last week’s 28-20 win over Nebraska, Ferentz expects his football team to be fully available for the title game.
Linebacker Ben Niemann and defensive end Nate Meier, who both suffered upper-body injuries against the Cornhuskers, are expected to go. Ferentz said Niemann practiced this week, as did Meier.
“[Meier] is going to play,” he said. “So we’ll see how effective he is, how long he goes, but he’ll play. Same thing with Ben.”
Former opponents
Earlier this week, Dantonio told reporters he planned on talking with his former defensive coordinator and current Pittsburgh head coach Pat Narduzzi before the title game.
Iowa beat the Panthers, 27-24, earlier this season via a last-second 57-yard Marshall Koehn field goal. Narduzzi dialed up a lot of pressure on the defensive side of the ball, one of his calling cards while with the Spartans, so Dantonio could figure to do the same.
Ferentz, however, did not call former Hawkeye and Oregon outside linebacker coach Erik Chinander, who lost to the Spartans early this year for insight into Dantonio’s team.
“Somebody on our staff may have,” Ferentz said. If they did, it didn’t come up in a staff meeting. They may have; guys communicate all the time.”
