Stoops and Ferentz - The Alternative Methods of Change.

After reading the post on OU and all the changes Stoops made after last year, here's the alternative method of change that undefeated Iowa took:

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"The Hawkeyes' program had become stale, failing to win more than eight games in any season since 2009. The streak of sellouts disappeared, and heading into the 2015 season, Iowa saw a 10 percent drop in season tickets, with only 64 percent of fans renewing their season tickets."

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Whoa.

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"Going to Iowa football isn't a thing you do these days, because people have better things to do. They have better things to do than sit in the cold in a stadium with no cell service, with benches the athletic department hasn't bothered to clear of snow and with a football team that seems content going 7-5 or 8-4.

"We weren't playing Iowa football," offensive line coach Brian Ferentz tells 'The Inside Read'. "We weren't tough and physical. We weren't any of those things. We lost close games. We were sh---- on special teams, got the ball run up our a-- and we didn't run the ball. We just weren't us. There was a lot of disappointment and frustration. I'd go so far as to say embarrassment because that's not who we are."

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Iowa still has the same offensive scheme as last year, all the same coaches. So what changed? Nothing major, they just started to do the little things better, changed their practice routine and (this is where it gets good LSU fans...) turned around their Special Teams -

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"Ferentz, who once joked that he might never return a punt again, took advice from former [Iowa] punt returner Micah Hyde, who has turned into one of the NFL's best return men for the Green Bay Packers.

On last Wednesday's WIXX show, Hyde was asked if he returned punts at Iowa.

"My junior and senior years I did it," he said, "but we had a bunch of freshmen out there. So it was fair-catch, fair-catch, fair-catch. I never really returned the ball."

"When I got here and returned a couple," Hyde said, "my coaches from back there [at Iowa] were like ‘Why didn't you do that here?'

His reply: "Well, you guys had freshmen blocking for me. I wasn't able to do anything."

This year, Iowa has put some of its best players on punt return and subsequently jumped from 106th to 23rd nationally in punt return average."

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So we have a Stoops who changed his entire offensive scheme and a Ferentz who stuck with his scheme but did a much better job of coaching it. Both coaches are in the Playoffs at this point and have proven that there is more than one way to make a complete turnaround in college football. This is why I love the sport, you just never know what you're going to get. Unless you don't change anything...