Kirk Ferentz was on the podium at Big Ten Media Days today, and not surprisingly, football was not the main topic of conversation. Ferentz directly addressed the recent activity in Cedric Everson/Abe Satterfield case, in light of the letter from the alleged victim's mother which came to light earlier this week. The Des Moines Register reports what Ferentz said:"The suggestion of a coverup - I can tell you this, I take great exception to that," Ferentz said. "If a logical person looked at this .... basically, you have to be morally bankrupt."
I'm not sure what that last sentence is supposed to mean, but I guess he's saying that a person would have to have prejudged Ferentz and the rest of the UI administration to assume that they were trying to cover up the incident. As much as I don't like how the university appears to have handled the investigation, he's right. If he wanted to cover up the incident and keep it quiet, he wouldn't have suspended Everson and Satterfield immediately.
Ferentz also asked reporters not to hold the 2007 team against the 2008, but to judge them based "on its own merits." However, football doesn't exist in a vacuum, and until there's some sort of resolution to the investigation of the investigation, the specter of last season will cloud the season. Every Hawkeye miscue, on the field and off, will raise the question of whether the team is too distracted to function properly.
But so what? There are things far more important than making sure that a football team isn't too distracted. The courts are now handling Everson and Satterfield; that's out of the university's hands. What is in their control is how the investigation of the investigation proceeds. If they're smart, UI administrators will make sure that this time the Iowa Board of Regents has full access to everything the university knows about the case. That wasn't the case last time, apparently, and it led some of us misguided souls to think there might have been a cover-up.
