By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – In helping to promote the start of the 2025 season, the 18 Big Ten head football coaches were asked recently to pick one player in program history that they would choose to suit up for games this year.

Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz doesn’t really like these kinds of questions because he is as team first as a coach can be and he isn’t comfortable picking favorites or one player over another player.

But he played along anyway, picking former star safety Bob Sanders to the surprise of nobody familiar with Hawkeye football over the past quarter century.

“Oh, man, that’s a tough question,” Ferentz said. “But I’d probably start with Bob Sanders. I’ve got like 26 years of guys mad at me now, outside of Bob.”

A lot of Hawkeye fans probably would say that it isn’t a tough question and that Ferentz was only being polite to his other players.

And they’re probably right.

Kirk Ferenz is entering his 27^th season as the Iowa head coach. He is the longest tenured head coach in the country, and he is just one victory from tying the legendary Woody Hayes as the Big Ten’s all-time winningest football coach with 205 wins.

Kirk Ferentz has relied on hundreds, if not thousands of players, to first rebuild the Iowa program and then sustain it for more than two decades.

The list of star players under Ferentz is long and distinguished; some of the names include offensive linemen Robert Gallery, Eric Steinbach, Marshal Yanda and Brandon Scherff; quarterbacks Brad Banks, Drew Tate and C.J. Beathard; running backs Ladell Betts, Shonn Greene and Kaleb Johnson; tight ends Dallas Clark, Noah Fant and T.J. Hockenson; defensive linemen Matt Roth, Adrian Clayborn and A.J. Epenesa; linebackers Abdul Hodge, Chad Greenway and Jay Higgins; and defensive backs Tyler Sash, Micah Hyde and Desmond King, just to name a few.

But as great as all those players were for Iowa, Bob Sanders took his greatness to a level that was unmatched by everyone else during the Ferentz era.

Nile Kinnick is widely regarded as the greatest Iowa football player of all time. He is Iowa’s only Heisman Trophy winner, earning that distinction in 1939.

But after him, a case could be made for Bob Sanders because of how he helped to change the culture and the tempo within the Iowa program during those important rebuilding years.

Sanders joined the Iowa program in 2000 as a lightly recruited and under-sized defensive back from Erie, Pennsylvania.

He picked Iowa over his only other scholarship offer from Ohio.

There was little reason to believe that Sanders would be anything special when he arrived at Iowa in 2000.

Iowa had finished 1-10 in Ferentz’s debut season in 1999, and with so little momentum, recruiting was an uphill battle.

Iowa wasn’t in position to sign star recruits at the time, so Kirk Ferentz had to take what he could get.

Ferentz’s mentor and long-time friend Joe Moore suggested that Iowa should take a chance on Sanders.

It would prove to be one of the best decisions that Kirk Ferentz has made as the Iowa head coach.

Sanders made his Hawkeye debut against Kansas State in the 2000 Eddie Robinson Classic at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.

His impact against Kansas State was felt immediately on special teams as Sanders pursued whoever had the football like a heat-seeking missile.

He threw his body around with reckless abandon, and he just made one play after another.

Sanders would go on to make first-team All-Big Ten three times while helping Iowa increase its win total from three games in 2000 to seven in 2001 to 11 in 2002 and 10 in 2003.

He quickly became known as a ferocious tackler whose bone-jarring hits made you almost feel sorry for his opponents.

The game has changed considerably since Sanders last played for the Hawkeyes as there is now more heightened awareness about the dangers of head injuries.

The penalty for targeting is enforced way more now than it ever has been.

Sanders wasn’t a dirty player, but he was violent and brutally tough. Hawkeye fans adored him, and still do to this day.

He would go to play for eight seasons in the NFL from 2004 to 2011 after being picked by the Indianapolis Colts in the second round of the 2004 NFL Draft. He won a Super Bowl with the Colts and was named the NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 2007.

Sanders has mostly kept a low profile since retiring from the NFL.

He served as Iowa’s honorary captain for the Purdue game in 2019 and he returned to Iowa City to be inducted in the Iowa Athletics Hall of Fame.

But that’s about the extent of his public appearances.

Bob Sanders doesn’t need or want publicity, but his legend will live on forever.

Few players have galvanized Hawkeye fans the way in which Bob Sanders has with how he played the game.

He poured his heart and soul into being a Hawkeye at a time when the program was at a crossroads.

He set a standard for how to practice and for how to embrace the daily grind.

And that’s why Bob Sanders is the greatest player during the Kirk Ferentz coaching era.

And it’s really not even close.