By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Now that you’ve had time to step away from the ledge, and hopefully, realize that Saturday’s 24-15 loss to Purdue is not reason to torch the earth or to gut the Iowa football coaching staff, let’s assess the state of the program.

With a 3-5 Big Ten record heading into Black Friday’s regular-season finale at Nebraska, Iowa will finish with a losing record in conference play for the first time since 2012 and for just the fifth time in 19 seasons under Kirk Ferentz.

But Iowa also lost on Senior Day for the fifth time since 2010, a statistic that caught me by surprise.

Those two facts help to describe where the programs stands under the 62-year old Ferentz.

The former points to long-term stability, while the latter points to failing to deliver at key moments, a conversion of good and bad.

My game column from Saturday focused on some critical flaws within the program that were exposed in the last two losses to Purdue and Wisconsin.

And I stand by what I said, but it’s also important to keep things in perspective.

My standards are higher for Iowa than for programs such as, ironically, Purdue and others like Indiana, Illinois, Rutgers, Maryland, Minnesota, Northwestern and Iowa State just to name a few.

And that’s because of what Ferentz and his predecessor and former boss, Hayden Fry, have built over the past four decades.

Fry is a legend for having rescued Iowa from football futility and would definitely be on my Mount Rushmore of head coaches for whom I admire and respect the most. He earned that distinction by ending nearly two decades of misery at Iowa and for building the Hawkeye brand that still remains strong today.

But it’s important to remember that during the second half of Fry’s 20-year reign as head coach, Iowa tied for a share of the Big Ten title just once in 1990, had two losing seasons in 1992 and 1998 and lost at least five games in six of 10 seasons.

With two more wins, Ferentz also will match Fry as Iowa's all-time winningest coach with 143 victories.

That doesn’t diminish that Fry did what many thought was impossible at the time by turning Iowa into a winner.

But it shows that there isn’t a big difference between what is happening now under Ferentz compared to what happened in the final decade under Fry.

That could say more about the Iowa program than about either coach. It’s hard to say because Iowa has only had two head football coaches since 1979, which separates it from almost every program in the country.

There also was fan frustration near the end of Fry’s run, but there wasn’t the Internet, which means there wasn’t social media. Imagine Fry dealing with twitter.

Fry was also a more sympathetic figure than Ferentz because he made the program relevant again and because he had a more powerful personality.

You could criticize Fry’s program, and the media did at times, but also paid for it when Fry would launch a counter attack.

Ferentz rarely strikes back at the media, and when he does, he uses more restraint and less theatrics than Fry did.

Ferentz coaches the same way, too.

Saturday’s loss to Purdue, which came on Senior Day, has triggered the usual fallout under Ferentz, including the demand for changes.

Coaching changes, personnel changes, changes to the offense, changes to recruiting, you name it and some disgruntled fans want it to happen immediately.

Some fans even want Ferentz to be relieved of his duties because they’re tired and frustrated with the current state of affairs, and with having the same head coach since 1999.

But like I’ve written in previous times when Iowa has struggled under Ferentz in the last decade or so, to suggest that he should be fired is silly, unfair and bad business under the circumstances.

The current skid feels like the worst of all the skids under Ferentz simply because it's the current skid.

Ferentz is the longest-tenured coach at the FBS level, and with each slump, the frustration with fans increases, while their patience decreases. 

Whether you agree or not, Ferentz hasn’t lost enough to be fired. Combine that with his high character, his high graduation rates, his loyalty and his expensive buyout and you have a head coach that still deserves to go out on his terms.

For that to change, Iowa would have to lose out this season and probably have back-to-back losing seasons for the numbers and the fairness factor to add up. Fan support would dwindle under those circumstances and that's when real problems would occur.

It just hasn't reached that point.

Some fans don’t want to hear that, especially in the wake of the Purdue loss, and with all that Iowa pours into football from a financial standpoint, but that’s where things sit right now.

You don’t dismiss one of the greatest coaches in program history, and a person who has conducted himself with class and dignity, following a three-year stretch in which Iowa has won at least 26 games and a division title.

Iowa also has achieved bowl eligibility in every season but one since 2001. That's not a huge deal since it only takes six victories to be bowl eligibile, but it's something.

You can scream for more changes to the staff, but how much is enough? Ferentz overhauled his staff in 2012, and before this season he changed his offensive coordinator; his special teams coach; two positions coaches and brought back his former offensive coordinator Ken O'Keefe to coach the quarterbacks.

But with that said, you also shouldn’t fear change. Kirk Ferentz won’t coach forever and there is no guarantee that his son, current offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz, will inherit the job.

I read a post on Twitter in which somebody warned that Iowa is one bad hire from being Kansas in football.

That’s not only being paranoid, it’s also dismissing what Fry and Ferentz have built at Iowa in terms of facilities, tradition and fan support.

Everybody just needs to take a deep breath and let this season play out. Iowa was picked by most to win about seven games this season and that still could happen.

The loss to Purdue was a devastating blow, especially coming off the loss at Wisconsin the week before in which Iowa was held to just 66 yards, and both defeats show that Kirk Ferentz’s program has some flaws and concerns.

But they weren’t enough to show Kirk Ferentz the door.