The details remain foggy after nearly a half-century, but the message was clear.

Five-year-old Kirk Ferentz and his older brother, John, were playing pick-up baseball with friends near their home in suburban Detroit.

Suddenly, someone swung a bat, and little Kirk, in the wrong place, was struck squarely in the head with the wooden bat.

Everyone rushed over to make sure John Ferentz’s kid brother was OK. But Kirk wanted none of it.

“He took a pretty good wallop,” John Ferentz, 57, of Peters Township said. “When you hear somebody’s head get hit by a baseball bat, it’s a frightening sound. But we had to drag him off the field. He didn’t have any quit in him.”

Decades later, Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz is just as determined. And as for quitting, well, don’t even think about it.

“It was my first concussion,” Ferentz, 53, joked upon recalling the story by phone Friday from Iowa City.

A former captain at Upper St. Clair High School and graduate assistant at Pitt, the 10th-year coach will return home when the Hawkeyes (3-0) play Pitt (1-1) at noon Saturday.

Long-awaited homecoming

Ferentz was born in Michigan, but his family moved to Pittsburgh when he was 9 — in the mid-1960s — and they remained here ever since. At least 25 family members, plus countless friends, will travel to Heinz Field when the schools play for the first time since 1952.

It will be a long-awaited homecoming for Ferentz, who hasn’t coached in Pittsburgh since 1998, when he was an assistant with the Baltimore Ravens.

“The only times I’ve been there coaching was to play the Steelers,” he said, “and we got nailed every time. … But returning is always special. Anybody will tell you that home is here. Pittsburghers feel that way.”

One person who will be at Heinz Field is WPIAL all-time victory leader Jim Render, who took over at Upper St. Clair a few years after Ferentz graduated in 1973.

“They just don’t make better people than Kirk,” Render said.

Kenny Brown, 53, a township commissioner in Upper St. Clair and Ferentz’s long-time teammate, feels the same way.

“He was someone that everybody looked up to,” Brown said. “He was a real leader.”

Ferentz, who played linebacker at Connecticut, has life-long Western Pennsylvania ties. He married his high school sweetheart, Mary Hart, the younger sister of his good friend and Upper St. Clair football co-captain Kevin Hart. They have five children, ranging in age from 24 to 14.

Last week, retired math teacher Rich Saccani, from Upper St. Clair, visited his former student in Iowa.

Sadly, Ferentz’s recent trips to Pittsburgh were mournful. In a four-year span, he returned home after losing his father John and his mother Elsie Mae, married 63 years, and his beloved mentor, former Pitt offensive line coach and Upper St. Clair head coach Joe Moore.

“Too many funerals,” Ferentz said.

Tough times at Iowa

Ferentz’s strength is being tested in other areas, as well. The 2002 Associated Press College Coach of the Year has endured a tumultuous past year-and-a-half, as Iowa tumbled into the second tier of the Big Ten with off-the-field problems and a sub .500 conference record.

Since April 2007, 18 Iowa players were arrested or cited by police, including five felonies. In the most troubling case, two football players allegedly sexually assaulted a female Iowa athlete in October 2007, and one month later, her mother accused the school of improperly handling the incident.

On the field, the Hawkeyes are 11-13 in conference play in the past three years. And in last season’s finale, they lost to 3-7 Western Michigan at home and missed a bowl game for the first time since 2000.

“There is no denying the off-the-field stuff was very disappointing,” Ferentz said. “But I ask people out here — the media — to look at the big picture. In nine years, we’ve had two years with off-the-field problems. The other seven years were exemplary.

“Only time will tell, but we have made a real strong commitment, and we have so many good kids. It is not representative of what we are. I think we will be fine.”

Most overpaid?

The pressures on Ferentz are heightened because he is one of the top 10 highest-paid coaches in college football, making about $3.1 million per year through 2012. He is, by far, the state’s highest-paid employee.

Last month, Forbes Magazine rated Ferentz the most overpaid coach in college football.

But there was a time when the football-crazed fans in Iowa City felt the former Baltimore Ravens offensive line coach was a bargain.

Ferentz resurrected Iowa from a 1-10 record his first season (1999) to Big Ten champions in 2002 and 2004.

The guy that Bill Belichick once hired as an assistant for the Cleveland Browns in 1993 was among the most popular and influential men in a state without any major pro sports franchises.

But since their 20-4 Big Ten run that had Ferentz on the short list for multiple NFL and major-college openings, the Hawkeyes are reeling.

Under Ferentz, the Hawkeyes are 4-6 against intrastate rival Iowa State. While Ferentz is a frequent target on message boards and chat rooms, he maintains the endearing respect of his peers.

“He’s done a great job there,” Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt said. “He’s a good enough coach that if he ever wants to become a head coach in the NFL, he’ll have opportunities.”

Still the same guy

Ferentz maintains the values he learned as a youngster. He and his wife donated $400,000 to the Children’s Hospital and the University of Iowa Liberal Arts and Sciences.

And when a tornado ravaged parts of northern Iowa last spring, Ferentz and his players helped remove some of the wreckage and built a make-shift weight room for the town’s high school football team at Aplington-Parkersburg.

“He’s a very genuine person,” said University of Maine professor Walter Abbott, part of the search committee that gave Ferentz his first head coaching job, at Maine, in 1990. “He’s one of the real special people in this game.”

To this day, Ferentz is more concerned with fundamentals than flash. One look inside his football office will reveal that. Render called it “very small and almost dingy.”

“The balcony off (Penn State coach Joe) Paterno’s office could host 100 people for lunch,” Render said. “I said ‘Kirk, you’ve got to get them to build you a better office.’ He said, ‘Oh, this is OK.’ He’s just wants a place to sit and watch films.”

Additional Information:

Ferentz file

School: University of Iowa

Position: Head football coach

Age: 53

Family: Wife, Mary, five children

Notable: Graduated from Upper St. Clair. … Former graduate assistant at Pitt.

---

Copyright ©2026— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---