How is Kirk staying a concern? His last two OC hires have sucked. College football has completely changed in the last year, Kirk’s just fine with a laughingstock offense, and has no interest/ability to navigate the transfer portal and also has somehow convinced himself that Spencer Petras is the best chance at winning. That’s all pretty concerning. But I agree, I can imagine it, but don’t think Kirk would ever actually do something like this, was just offering as a counter to the attempts at leverage people are giving Barta.
they’ve been a top 20ish program since 2015, including two years with the worst QB in D1. if they had an average, or even below average QB, they would be 5-1 or 6-0. yes, this year is going to damage recruiting, but I think Iowa would be able to have a merely bad offense if not for the bizarre commitment to Petras. And with the machines Levar and Phil have built ”merely bad” probably keeps them as a top 20ish program, because the changes in the last year are really just going to boost the top 5-10 programs, not the rest of the sport.
So maybe mis-identifying and poorly developing the worst QBs possible to is now going to be a repeatable skill, or maybe Kirk would just decide to permanently self sabotage. but they’d probably find a merely bad one going forward, and that would be enough.
so unless you think top 20ish isn‘t good enough (which is reasonable, although it will leave you miserable), Kirk will find historically bad QBs no matter the OC, or Kirk will sabotage the program out of vengeance, I do not find retaining Kirk without Brian to be a concern
