From some time before this season began until deep into October, Kirk Ferentz was a nervous coach.
He worried in the way leaders in his profession often do: concern that despite countless hours of preparation and attention to seemingly every detail, he and his staff at Iowa had failed to account for a factor that would seem obvious when it struck the Hawkeyes a crushing blow.
Then, around the time of Iowa’s bye week, after seven games without a defeat, the 60-year-old Ferentz let go.
Midway through a season in which the Hawkeyes stepped outside the routine so deeply rooted over Ferentz’s first 16 years at the school, he realized the proverbial other shoe would not drop.