ESPN Big Ten Blog

Posted by ESPN.com's Adam Rittenberg

	Scott Boehm/Getty Images
	Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz discussed the sexual assault case involving two former Hawkeyes football players and a female student-athlete.

CHICAGO -- I just got off the phone with Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, one of several university officials under fire regarding the handling of a sexual assault case involving two former Hawkeyes football players and a female student-athlete. There will be plenty of time for analysis later, but here is what Ferentz had to say regarding the situation, his team's disciplinary problems and the upcoming season. Ferentz can't discuss the specifics of the case, but he did weigh in on several topics.

What has the last week been like for you?

Kirk Ferentz: Our hopes are that our Board of Regents, they've already investigated the matter once. The only thing that's changed now is they're going to come back and investigate again, and I'm very confident they're going to have the same findings. Nonetheless, it's become certainly an item of discussion locally.

(Athletic director) Gary (Barta) mentioned in his statement that he's looking forward to addressing the specifics of the situation publicly. Do you feel the same way?

KF: I would hope people would realize there may two different sides to this last release, if you will. I don't have access to information, to every degree of the letter that came out. But certainly the part I have knowledge of, I'm very confident that the Regents will find that the steps taken by the members involved were first and foremost, of the best concern for the young woman and her family. Everything was followed very properly, procedurally.

When you look back and how the situation was handled, was there anything you would have done differently?

KF: Not to my knowledge. The bottom line is it certainly appears there was an incident. That will be decided in the proper place, which is not on our campus. That's going to be decided in a court of law. In fairness to all parties involved, everybody has to reserve judgment on that. And the second part of the thing is, how is it handled by people on campus. I'm totally confident that everything was done the way it was supposed to have been done. There's a strict protocol that has to be followed. It was followed, to my knowledge. It's sad that an alleged incident took place, but nobody can do anything about that at this point. What happened after, from my knowledge, everything was handled extremely well.

Do you expect the second investigation to change anything?

KF: I'm only involved in certain parts of it and I can just tell you this. Everything I'm aware of was done with concern for the young woman, also concern for the alleged parties involved. That's really all you can do. From what I know, at least everyone on campus exhausted every possible option available to them and everything was handled very well. The Regents already came to that conclusion after an investigation, and I'm very confident they're going to come to the same conclusion down the road. The only other aspect of that, I would not be surprised if they readjust the procedure one more time. That may be a result of this investigation. But that's up to them. All the parties involved could do was follow the procedure that's been laid out.

What could that adjustment be?

KF: I have no idea what that might be.

You have a season to prepare for, and camp is starting soon. Are you concerned about this being a distraction for the guys or you and your coaching staff?

KF: I'll backtrack now. My role in this whole thing was fairly minimal, as you might imagine. And that's how it should be. My attention was to the matters in our house. Those were addressed very quickly. They were handled firmly and decisively and fairly. That's all we can do. And we've moved on from that since that time, which would have been during the fall semester.

From a more general perspective, how do you plan to address the discipline issues that keep coming up with the team when the players get back together?

KF: First off, we continue to address it and we have always, in nine plus years, been very proactive about the way we try to address citizenship. We try to have rigorous educational opportunities for our players. The fact of the matter is we've gone through a period where we've had an inordinate amount of problems. We went through a situation similar to this in 2001, but in nine years' time now, we've had two seasons that I would term as very disappointing as far as off-the-field citizenship and conduct. It's never been acceptable in our program, never will be. Probably the only thing different is we've maybe rethought some things that we are doing. We've tried to think of ways maybe to better educate our players and hopefully, in the end, get them to make better decisions on a more consistent basis. The couple things I would ask. I would hope people would give this team, the 2008 team, a chance to establish their own identity and judge them on their actions. This roster, the roster that we're working with now, really took shape back the 1st of March. That's where we like to think we turned the page. Only time will tell if we have or we haven't. And I'd hope people would be careful and look specifically at what's happened and realize the challenges we're facing aren't much different than the challenges other people face, either. That's really the bottom line.

Where are you guys at in terms of hiring the player development position you brought up back in the spring?

KF: It's definitely going to happen. We're working through university procedure right now, but it's going to happen. Whenever it does happen, one point I will make painstakingly clear to everyone is that this is not a panacea. By no means is this person responsible. He's not the coach of conduct or anything like that. This person's going to be a supplement person for the coaching staff and the players, in particular, our younger players, just helping them with the transition to the college campus, the college community, the town that we live in. That's our No. 1 objective with this whole thing.

You mentioned 2001. The way these problems seem to come in waves, is that hard to explain?

KF: Yes and no. Probably the parallels I would draw, we were an immature team last year, if you look at us. We did not have a lot of seniors and we did not have a lot of juniors, so we were a young team and young teams, when I say immature, teams that aren't experienced, they tend to maybe not perform as well on the field, and you could draw some parallels to off the field as well. If you're looking for reasons, that would probably be one factor right there. The bottom line is this: We had way too many people make bad decisions, and they were things that they knew were bad decisions. They would have known that in seventh grade, let alone being in college. They were things they shouldn't have been doing.

How much do you lean on your team leaders to get this turned around? A lot of it must be player-driven.

KF: We've always leaned on our upper classmen and our leaders. But that being said, they can't be with those players every day, just like the coaches can't. And ultimately, it gets down to the individuals making the right decisions when they have the opportunities to make wrong decisions, and every college student has plenty of opportunities to make wrong decisions. Certainly you want to establish a culture which, again, I think if you look at big picture, if you look over nine years, you'd say we've got a pretty good culture here. That's our intent, to get right back on that track. We feel we're well on the way there, but only time's going to tell.

Are you even more anxious to get on the field after everything that's happened?

KF: I'd be excited either way. Again, we drew a line in the sand back at the beginning of March. That's our focus. From that point on, our focus has been on what's in front of us. We're excited about every season. Certainly we've gone things that we want to demonstrate better performance in. It's fair to say we want to do it on the field and off the field.

Ferentz also addressed the subject during his time on the dais during Big Ten media day.