Innovations in nepotism, university edition

This is a grimly hilarious piece about the goings-on at the University of Iowa, where head football coach Kirk Ferentz has, technically speaking, no right to evaluate let alone fire one of his two most important assistants, the offensive coordinator. This is because in a striking and possibly inexplicable coincidence the offensive coordinator is his own son, Brian Ferentz, and the university’s anti-nepotism policies, which its administrators take very seriously in a seriously very serious way, prohibit an immediate family member from being supervised by another immediate family member.

Now what makes this story particularly interesting is that either statistical analysis means nothing or Brian Ferentz has been the worst offensive coordinator in major college football among people who have been employed in that role continuously over the past six seasons, and by a truly staggering margin.

Here’s Iowa’s performance in total offense among all FBS teams in the six seasons that Kirk Ferentz’s son has been the team’s offensive coordinator:

2017: 92/130

2018: 117/130

2019: 99/130

2020: 88/128

2021: 121/130

2022 to date: 131/131

Average: 108/130

Iowa’s offense this year is dead last in most statistical categories among P5 teams. TBF it’s only second to last in scoring offense among P5 teams, ahead of Colorado, who just fired its coach in the middle of the season.

In fact Iowa’s offensive performance this year looks very similar to the average performance of a team against the 1997 Michigan defense in that year. That might have been the greatest defense in college football history. But keep in mind that offensive totals are way up since 1997, so actually the 2022 Iowa offense turns the average 2022 defense it has played against into a defense that’s quite a bit better than the 1997 Michigan defense.

But it gets better still: Iowa has played a very weak schedule to date. Michigan and Illinois are the only FBS teams Iowa has played that don’t have a losing record in their games against teams other than Iowa.

Brian Ferentz gets paid $900,000 per year.

As an extra added bonus, Iowa has possibly the best defense in major college football this year (with the caveat that the schedule has been weak), and great special teams, so the only thing standing between the team being elite and its current status as crushingly mediocre is its almost indescribably terrible offense.

OK it’s sportsball so who cares, but this amazingly egregious example of pure nepotism is merely a particularly striking example of something that anybody who has been in academia for any length of time has seen over and over again in more muted and genteel forms. The whole phenomena of the “trailing spouse” and the gifted and talented child of the distinguished long time faculty member deserve a lot more sociological attention than they have gotten to this point. It’s too bad Erving Goffman isn’t around to investigate it, but more people should.