A blocked PAT kick and a high snap on a relatively short field goal (31 yards) deprived Iowa of four big points against the Badgers. Stuff happens and putting it all on the coaches is a little ridiculous.

Not so with that fake punt and also not so with Iowa's careless clock management. Toss in the price tag on this head coach and shrugging these things off is just a little too polite.

Walk the sideline at football games from the high school level on up and the receiving teams in any punting situation always have one or two or more coaches shouting “watch the fake'' or words to that effect. If anyone was hollering such a warning on the Iowa sideline, it was falling on deaf ears.

As for the costly use of that final time-out, it was disappointing to hear Ferentz seemingly exonerate himself with the comment, “I don't think that was necessarily the turning point of the game.''

No, it definitely wasn't. Still, this was the point in the post-game press conference where I really wanted this highly popular coach – a great guy, to be sure – to fess up and suggest he hadn't handled the situation as well as he should have.