Andrew Logue

alogue@dmreg.com

CEDAR FALLS, Ia. — His success is indisputable.

And yet, Mark Farley is generally under-appreciated, not only statewide, but even among some Northern Iowa football fans.

With the Panthers’ next victory — which could come in Saturday’s season opener at Iowa State — the 53-year-old Farley will stand alone as the school’s all-time winningest coach.

When considering the climate in which Farley has approached this milestone, a case can be made that’s he is not only the best football coach in Northern Iowa history, but also the most important and influential.

Stan Sheriff, the man who inspired and oversaw construction of the UNI-Dome in the 1970s, compiled a 129-101-4 record from 1960-82.

Farley has gone 129-61 since taking over the program in 2001, despite dramatic shifts in the landscape of college athletics.

The spending gap between UNI and their in-state rivals Iowa and Iowa State widens every year.

UNI's conference foes have also made Farley’s job tougher, with NCAA Football Championship Subdivision powers North Dakota State and South Dakota State (which joined the Missouri Valley Conference in 2008) posing challenges on the field and in recruiting.

To top it off, Farley is generally overshadowed by UNI’s nationally renowned men’s basketball program, which has become a March darling with seven NCAA Tournament appearances the past 13 seasons.

Through it all, Farley remains devoted to the program that altered his life as he learned the game under previous Panthers coaches such as Sheriff, Darrell Mudra, Earle Bruce and Terry Allen.

“I take the responsibility that it’s my job right now to make sure when I leave here football is bigger and better than what it was when I came,” Farley said. “And the challenge is, times have changed.”

Farley, who first arrived in Cedar Falls 34 years ago, witnessed many of those changes first-hand.

WALK-ON FROM WAUKON

Few recruiters were impressed with Farley’s multi-sport talents at Waukon High School.

So the quarterback/tailback/strong safety took a job at the construction company where his father, Bill, was a foreman.

At 18, he was driving a truck during a winter layoff in 1982, and while delivering tires to the UNI-Dome met up with a buddy.

They decided to sit up in the stands during practice, where Farley watched Sheriff run the Panthers through their drills.

“You just have that fire," Farley explained, “like, ‘Man, I want to do that so bad.’ ’’

WATCH: Farley says UNI-Dome's energy ignites his players

When practiced ended, he went down on the field and asked about enrolling and joining the team.

The “Walk-on from Waukon” became an all-conference linebacker and led UNI in tackles three consecutive seasons.

“We’d call him 'Jason,' from the movie Friday the 13th,” said Terry Allen, who was then UNI’s offensive coordinator. “I mean, he’d be over there, slobber coming out of his mouth. ... He was just an intense, great-effort person.”

Farley became a graduate assistant when his playing days were done, and was hired as a full-time staff member after Allen took over as head coach in 1989.

“What got me really involved, thinking back on it, is they gave me a position,” Farley said. “I got to coach the inside linebackers. ... It wasn’t just a GA following around and throwing balls. It was a guy active in a classroom, teaching.

“You still had a factor in the wins and losses, because you were getting somebody else ready to play.”

PANTHER PASSION

Allen guided UNI to seven straight NCAA Division I-AA playoff appearances, before leaving for Kansas in 1997.

In his absence, UNI slipped into a rut.

Mike Dunbar never won fewer than seven games in his four seasons as coach, but he never earned a playoff berth.

When Dunbar took a job as Northwestern’s offensive coordinator after the 2000 season, UNI athletic director Rick Hartzell reached out to Allen.

“What I first did is I called Terry to say, ‘Do you want to come back?’ ’’ Hartzell recalled. “He said he couldn’t, which I completely, 100 percent, understood.

“Then I said, ‘Well, I want to talk to (Bill) Salmon.' And (Allen) said, ‘Well, I’d like you to talk to Farley, too.' ”

“I said ‘OK.’ I really did that as a favor to Terry.”

Salmon and Farley both followed Allen to Kansas, serving as offensive coordinator and linebackers coach. But Salmon shared a bond with Hartzell that dated to their playing days at UNI during the 1970s.

“When I interviewed them both, it was a really, really difficult decision for me,” Hartzell said, “because Bill and I are longtime friends and I didn’t know Farley.”

After going through a traditional interview processes, Farley and Hartzell chatted in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn.

Farley’s eagerness and his vision for UNI won Hartzell over.

“This is not meant to be a negative on Mike Dunbar, because I liked Mike a lot and Mike was a good football coach, but he wanted to be the CEO and sit in the office and draw up plays,” Hartzell said. “I thought we needed somebody completely different. We needed some passion. We needed some energy.

“We needed somebody who was going to drive these kids and push them.”

Farley became that somebody. He was introduced as Northern Iowa’s football coach on April 1, 2001, in a joint news conference that also unveiled Greg McDermott as the new men’s basketball coach.

While McDermott was tasked with reviving a hoops program that went 7-24 the previous season, Farley’s mission was playoffs or bust.

“Yeah, there is an expectation to win,” Farley said. “Probably more than any other sport, just because of what’s happen in the past and what the expectation is in the future.”

The Panthers went 10-3 in Farley’s debut season, reaching the NCAA Division I-AA semifinals.

SUSTAINED SUCCESS

Farley has averaged 8.6 wins over 15 seasons, taking UNI to the playoffs nine times and winning at least a share of seven conference titles.

Salmon has been Farley’s right-hand man and offensive guru.

“We’ve had some great ups,” Salmon said. “Our downs haven’t been bad. That’s kind of the nice thing about how Mark has handled everything and that’s kind of the nice thing about UNI football in general.

“Our lows aren’t lows, compared to a lot of other people.”

Salmon credits Hartzell for talking him into joining Farley’s staff, after being passed over for the head coaching position.

Hartzell also played a primary role in helping Farley transition from a fiery player and assistant (who once evoked images from a horror film) to a bedrock figure.

“He’d kind of come up the hard way,” Hartzell said. “He wasn’t a five-star recruit or any of that. He came in and just played his tail off.

“I thought a guy like that, with me there and some good people around him, we could teach him the other stuff.”

Farley is the only coach to lead UNI to a national championship game (losing to Appalachian State 21-16 in 2005) and he’s beaten Iowa State twice (2007, 2013).

He also came painfully close to knocking off Iowa for the first time in more than a century (losing 17-16 in 2009).

Which defeat would he most like to change?

“I’d take the national championship game, but my heart wants that Iowa game,” Farley said. “For our program, that national championship game was a great experience. The Iowa game, we had. It was the field goal at the end. Two of them.

“It was one of those unique moments in the state of Iowa football history, that we had our chance.”

A TOUGH SITUATION

The Panthers’ accomplishments under Farley mask the circumstances they must overcome.

Iowa State received more than $23 million in revenue distribution for 2015 from the Big 12 Conference, according to a report by USA Today, with future payout expected to approach $30 million.

Iowa already receives more than $32 million as a member of the Big Ten Conference.

Northern Iowa? The Panthers get just over $1 million from the Missouri Valley Conference and NCAA.

“The financial discrepancy has gone off the chart,” Allen said. “But that’s kind of the way it is, the lay of the land in college athletics now, with the Power Five and their television money.”

Northern Iowa football feeling Power Five snub

According to a USA Today database, Iowa State’s total operating expenses for the fiscal year ending in 2015 was $75,209,309, compared to $28,227,582 just 10 years earlier.

Iowa’s total operating expenses was $109,214,651, compared to 54,982,658 in 2005.

UNI, with an annual athletic budget around $13 million, continue to fall farther behind in the chase for money and attention.

“The challenge for us is, making sure our message gets out there,” Farely said. “Yeah, when you look at Iowa and Iowa State, and everybody wants to talk about FBS or Division I-A, that’s the part where you feel slighted.

“We just may be the two-star and they’re four-star, five-star. But it’s like being the walk-on. It’s not what we come in as. It’s what we leave as. And we’ve had guys walk out of here four- or five-star and still playing today, or doctors and lawyers.”

Farley also faces a rigorous schedule.

When his tenure began, North Dakota State (five straight national championships since 2011) and South Dakota State (five playoff appearances since 2009) were not part of the Valley.

The Bison and Jackrabbits not only elevated the standard of play, they impacted recruiting.

“The one thing nobody understands or realizes is, before those Dakota schools came in, the scholarship situation was a lot different,” Hartzell said. “UNI used to be able to go out to central and western Iowa and get linebackers and offensive linemen in particular for a third of a scholarship, or a half of a scholarship, so you could develop some incredible depth.

“But when those Dakota schools came in, they started giving those same kids full rides. Now, all of a sudden, the UNI methodology for building a program really changed.”

UNI is allowed to give out 63 full scholarships, and currently have more than 40 Iowa kids on their roster.

Farely’s annual recruiting budget is $80,000.

“The biggest difference from 2001 till today is probably in recruiting,” Farley said. “You need more than 63 players to develop to become a great team year after year.

“One of the biggest things we do is try and mange that roster with the budget and with the equivalencies, so that you have a developmental group coming through as much as a great football team on the field every year.

“That’s been the hardest thing.”

PASSING A MENTOR

Could Farley ever leave UNI?

He has been contacted by other schools in the past, but the emotional tug of being a Panther keeps him in the Cedar Valley.

"When there is interest from other schools, I listen," said Farley, who earns about 350,000 a year at UNI, "but I also know that this is a very unique and special place. I know the importance of this place and it is home."

Sheriff, who was coaching UNI the day Farley made a delivery to the UNI-Dome, left for Hawaii in 1983.

“Stan Sheriff was a visionary by building the Dome and putting UNI in FCS football,” Farley said. “And now, hopefully, we’ve taken it to another level, because of the type of players who have played here… or the type of coaches who came out of here.

“Stan really laid the foundation for us to get the opportunity, to get to go on and play this game further at a higher level.”

There’s little time to reflect or celebrate.

Conference realignment and the ever-rising cost of being competitive have left Farley feeling uneasy.

“There’s going to be one more move with the Big 12,” Farley said. “They’re going to take two, possibly four more teams.

“There’s going to be another re-shuffle. ... Where are we going to land in that re-shuffling?”

Wherever the Panthers land, Farley’s goal will be the same.

“I’ve always felt that my greatest responsibility is to lead this program in a way that the people of Iowa and the alumni of UNI would all be proud of it,” he said. “Every time I walk in this door, that’s really what I feel needs to be done.”

UNI COACHING HISTORY

Mark Farley: 2001-present, 129-61, 9 playoff appearances, 7 conference titles

Mike Dunbar: 1997-2000, 29-15, 0 playoff appearances, 0 conference titles

Terry Allen: 1989-1996, 75-26, 7 playoff appearances, 7 conference titles

Earle Bruce: 1988, 5-6, 0 playoff appearances, 0 conference titles

Darrell Mudra: 1983-1987, 43-16-1, 2 playoff appearances, 3 conference titles

Stan Sheriff: 1960-1982, 129-101-4, 2 bowl games and 1 playoff appearance, 6 conference championships