Q: What components of this team do you like?
A: We certainly have potential. We have some real quality experience at certain areas right now. But the big, big variables, which seem to be pretty consistent from year to year are: how the young guys are going to step in? I say young guys, I mean the guys who haven’t started. How are they going to step in and fill roles that need to be filled and how is our leadership going to develop? We lost some very good players, but we lost some great leadership. On top of that, the overall team chemistry/mentality, how’s that going to develop and come on? Based on what I know, we’re not ready yet. We’re not even close to being ready. August is a real big month for that.

Q: How do you develop team chemistry?
A: It’s like, how do you motivate a team? Well, you better have some motivated players. You have to have the right ingredients. I think it’s our job as coaches and the other, more experienced players to help show the young guys what is required, what is the tempo, how important are details, what is the work ethic required, all those kinds of things. It always remains to be seen and typically reveals itself during the course of the season.

Q: Can you recruit chemistry?
A: Yes and no. You’re recruiting segments of it or components. You’re looking for traits, I think. I’m sure everybody in coaching is looking for the same thing for the most part. I’m sure there are certain things that are unique for our situation, but when it all shakes out, for the most part that’s how guys end up coming here and that’s how other guys end up going to Miami or Arizona State or somewhere like that.

Q: What are you referring to as being unique here?
A: We’re not a real glorified outfit. There’s nothing overly sexy about Iowa, the state, the Midwest, the weather, however you want to rank it and how we do things, so our approach is kind of nuts and bolts. We sell education. We sell a chance to be a part of what we hope is a team that can maybe compete for a championship year in and year out, and what we think is a pretty good college experience by virtue of the city, the community and our state. There’s some real pluses on that end. But it’s not the weather, it’s not the flash. Coach Fry used to say, ‘You sell the sizzle, not the steak.’ Well, we don’t have a lot of sizzle. At least I’m not a big sizzle seller. I’m not the most sizzling guy around.

Q: In this situation, do you think it’s harder to win a national championship or have a five-year run of finishing in the top 10 every year?
A: We could both sit here right now and try to put a list together of 10 teams nationally that have more going for them in terms of inherent advantages and our list would probably be similar. I don’t know if that’s eight (teams) or 12, but there are eight to 12 schools that, before the race gets started, they have a headstart. I’m not crying about it or whining, but those are the facts and most people that know anything about sports would acknowledge that in college football.

I’ll deviate for one second for an example there — Carson Palmer graduates, wins the Heisman, first-round pick of the Bengals, first guy taken in the draft, he’s done very well in the NFL and it’s no big surprise to any of us who saw him. You lose a player of that magnitude and they follow it up with a guy who’s even better, had more success and he’s another first-round and ends up going 10th. He could’ve been a top three pick. I think it’s fair to say they have some things going for them that we don’t inherently. I don’t mean that as disrespect to anyone involved in the program, obviously Pete Carroll and everybody there is doing a great job, including their players. But before the race gets going, they’ve got a little bit of a headstart.

That’s just the way it is. It may be eight schools, it may be 12 that have that advantage. The good news is after that, it’s a jump ball and anybody is allowed to be involved in the race, which is nice. We all paid our entry fee, so it’s not like we can’t afford our entry fee. Then it’s what you make of your opportunities, and everybody does have an opportunity. It’s been demonstrated in our league, you look at teams like Louisville, you look at teams like West Virginia and how they’ve performed. That’s the great thing about college football, and certainly it’s true in our conference.

Yeah, typically it’s true about Michigan and Ohio State, and to some degree Penn State, are usually going to be in that top five. But that usually means there’s room for a couple others, and if you do well enough you might be right with those guys or you might be ahead of them. That’s the fun of the whole thing.

Q: What are the ways of playing catch up?
A: First of all, you have to know where you are and what the challenges are. In any equation you’re presented with, you have to know where do we stand and what do we have to do to get in the mix? What will work for us to get us in the mix? There’s all kinds of ways you can go about it, I suppose. You’re probably talking about 105 Division I schools in the country right now. And just like there are eight or 12 at the front end, there’s some at the bottom end too. But there’s a bunch of folks in the middle that have an opportunity. To me, that’s the challenge, that’s what it’s all about.

There was a time, I think, when Michigan wasn’t Michigan. I’m not that big of a historian, but I don’t know if Ohio State was great year in and year out before Woody Hayes. You’ve got to start somewhere. Frank Beemer was real close to being fired at Virginia Tech, and I think if he hadn’t been a grad they probably would’ve got him and all of a sudden it turned. Dick McPherson was walking the plank at Syracuse and then the quarterback Don McPherson showed up and the whole team came together and they went through a great run.

There are ways. That’s the great thing about college football – anything’s possible. We almost demonstrated that in 2002. We were real close to being in the thick of the thing all the way down to road. For us, our focus always starts right here in our conference. Maybe that limits us, I don’t think it does, but I know you have to take care of what’s going on in your own yard before you can worry about what’s going on beyond your yard. What we try to do is worry about what we’re doing and then what we can do in our conference. If you win the conference and you’re good enough, you might be involved in something else. But if you don’t win the conference, it’s unrealistic to think something’s going to happen beyond that.

Q: What do you think are the main components of a Big Ten championship team?
A: Probably the things we first started talking about. The mindset of the team has to be right. It absolutely has to be right because it gets back to knowing who you are. Our margin for error isn’t near as wide as some of the folks we’re talking about trying to compete with. I don’t mean any disrespect to other people, but look at the NFL draft. How many players did Ohio State have taken in the first round? (Five.) And then most people have them winning the conference plus winning the national championship or being in the top three. Figure that one out. Do the math on that one.

So it all starts with us being aware of who we are, what we are and what we need to be mentally if we’re going to have a chance to show up and compete with the members of our conference. It starts with that.

Another factor is fate if you want to call it that, injuries, bounces of the ball, possibly officiating. I don’t want to go down that path too much. But sometimes things roll your way a little bit, and obviously your performance has something to do with that. And sometimes you just get on a roll. In 2002, it was hard to find us with an injury. I think D.J. (Johnson) was really the only guy who missed significant time. That certainly is part of it.

The other thing is you’ve got to perform. You’ve got to perform well every week, realizing, too, that there’s probably going to be a game or two when you’re not on top of your game or somebody else is really on top of theirs, and you may have to pull something out of your hat to get it done, kind of like our Purdue game in 2002. But that’s just typical, like Purdue in 1985. I think we had to have a last-minute drive. The Michigan game everybody knows about, but the Purdue game over there, we were favored and it took a heck of a drive at the end of the game for us to win the ballgame. That’s usually how it goes in a championship year. You’re going to be in those situations, and you find out what you’ve got in your tank.

To win a championship, it doesn’t matter who you are, that’s usually going to be the case. You’re going to get caught a couple weeks where, Boy, we got out of there. If you’re going to get to that tier, you’re going to have to respond in those situations.

Q: If you take care of the intangible things, do you think you have the team that can be in the race in mid-November?
A: I think sitting here today, we have enough to think it might be possible. But I also know we have enough in the variable department just in terms of experience and things of that nature that it’s way too early to say, way too early to even try to predict that. The one nice thing is that history says — at least over the last four years — that we’ll have a chance, based on how guys come along and that type of thing. But it’s not going to get us anything this year.

Q: The three positions people are really putting under a microscope right now are the receivers, the linebackers and the secondary. What did you take away from what you saw of those groups in the spring?
A: Probably three very different pictures to me. I don’t mean to underestimate anything, but I’m probably least concerned about the linebacker situation. And the main reason is this – to me, Mike Humpal just had a fantastic spring. We’ve been waiting for him to get healthy and feel good, and I think he’s at that point now, which is great. He really had a significant knee surgery, so last year was up and down for him. But he really looked like the Mike Humpal we envisioned.

The rest of that equation is that having him play the outside linebacker position, from where I’m sitting, gives us the chance to have the best of both worlds – a Grant Steen/LeVar Woods type player with potentially better athleticism than both of those guys, but he doesn’t have the experience right now. We really feel good about that.

The other part is with Ed Miles last year, we really kind of shoe-horned him into a position. I think he’ll be more comfortable performing off the ball. That’s really a more natural position for him, but it would’ve been tough to move Greenway last year. It really wasn’t even a discussion. We felt like Ed was our next best guy and we wanted to get him on the field.

We think we’ve helped ourselves by getting a guy like Mike Humpal, who’s more natural at that position out there and putting Ed back where he’s more comfortable. He really had a good spring also. He’ll still be our backup outside guy until we can develop somebody. Bryon Gattas had a good spring at the Will position and I’m really encouraged by what I’m seeing out of Pat Angerer and the way he’s coming on too. The middle linebacker position is a little bit of a jump ball between Zach Gabelmann and Mike Klinkenborg, but we feel good about both of those players.

I’m fully aware we lost two NFL caliber guys, two guys who could potentially start as rookies. Yet at the same time, the group we have back is totally capable and they also have the benefit of having a line in front of them that’s played a little bit, which made a big difference last year, especially early. I’m not overly concerned there.

I think if you look at the corner position, you lose two veterans, guys who start the better part of four years, and that’s certainly a concern. The good news is both Adam and Charles are probably more athletic and talented that Antwan and Jovon. The obvious difference is the experience factor.

The position that’s probably the cloudiest is the receiver position. You graduate three seniors, two starters and that’s the biggest thing there. Two guys who really came on last year are Herb Grigsby and Andy Brodell. Herb continued to do well in the spring. Andy, unfortunately, missed a lot of time with a heel bruise. We’re counting on Calvin to really step up. Keep our fingers crossed, it would be great for him to be a Ramon Ochoa story or a Warren Holloway story where this year he stays healthy and has the kind of year he wants to have. Then after that, we’re still really searching and looking to see who’s who and what’s what. I think that’s probably the cloudiest position going into camp.

Q: The fact that you have Drew and Albert, a pretty veteran line and a strong group of tight ends, does that buy you some time in allowing the receivers to come along?
A: I think so. It’s typical every year. Last year we were pretty veteran at receiver. The other thing I’ll interject about the receivers is Ed Hinkel was such a leader. He did so many things for us in so many different ways beyond the statistics. Just like losing a guy like Abdul Hodge, who was really the switchboard on our defense and a strong leader, you lose a guy like Hinkel at the receiver group and it’s more than just statistics.

But going back to the question, last year we were unproven at the running back position, so you’re counting on your receivers and Drew and some other positions to help out. This year, not only do we feel good about Albert, but we saw Damian improve and have a good spring. Shonn Greene was limited last year by a shoulder bruise, which limited him for October or we would’ve played him more. But he had a good spring, so I think we’re pretty solid back there. You’ve got a guy like Tom Busch, so we know what he’s going to do. Then with Champ, we’ve got two veteran guys there. Then the tight end position really had a good spring. Scott continues to improve. Ryan Majerus had a tremendous spring. Tony’s really doing well, and we’re looking for Brandon Myers to take that step also. We have the potential to be pretty solid at all those positions. Then Drew, you’ve got a guy who’s going into his third year as a starter and I’m really counting on him to have a big year, a year fitting for a senior.

Q: You look at his numbers and nobody thought of him as an all-Big Ten quarterback last year, but his statistics were better almost all the way across the board. When you look at the way he played, the decisions he made, did you see improvement?
A: You’re not allowed to do this in football, but if you take the two early-season losses out of the equation, I thought he really played well. In one of the games, he didn’t get an awful lot of support, there wasn’t much we could do offensively. The other game, he just had a bad outing. But that’s football. If you subtract those two games, I thought he played pretty well during the course of the year. There are always things you can do better, and that’s true of every player, but we didn’t have to rely on him quite so much last year, which probably factors into the equation.

The other part of the equation is if you look at our conference, I don’t know if I can remember a year when so many guys across the board played well at that position – pretty much top to bottom.

Q: You touched on the two games from last September. Has that been a sticking point for you guys, something you’ve really analyzed and looked at what’s gone wrong recently in the first month?
A: We’ve given it some thought and looked at it hard, and I don’t know if we’ve come up with any big discoveries in terms of what we can do. There are some little things we may try to tweak. I think maybe as much as anything, it’s just more team awareness to it. But part of it is that we tend to be a developmental team, as I’ve said, and that factors in as well. We’d all certainly rather get off to a better start. We’ve had our ups and downs, even in 2002. We had the loss in Kinnick and we were fortunate to get out with a win against Miami (Ohio). That was a white-knuckle one, too.

Q: There’s a perception out there that the Iowa State game means more to Dan than it does to you and that’s why they’ve gotten the best of you guys in the past several years. Does that bother you that people think that way?
A: I have absolutely no control over what people think. I could say anything to support that or disagree with it, but it really doesn’t matter what I say. What bothers me is we haven’t won as many games in the series as I would like to have. I’m not saying we deserve to have won because they’ve won the ballgames, they’ve got the edge in the record since I’ve been here, so that’s got my attention. But how people think about the series, that doesn’t affect me. I’m a coach, just like everybody, we want to win every game that’s on the schedule. And they’re all important. Obviously, if you’re playing an intra-state team, it’s very important.

(continued in part 2)

Copyright © 2006, Andy Hamilton, Iowa City Press Citizen, July 29, 2006