By John Bohnenkamp

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The NCAA’s new “5 in 5 rule” is going to get more freshmen on the football field early, Iowa chief of staff/general manager Tyler Barnes said during Friday’s media day.

The new rule, which gives athletes five years of eligibility, will end the concern about saving a redshirt year for freshmen, Barnes said. In past seasons, freshmen could play in four games to preserve their redshirt season.

“The best part of 5-in-5 is now we have freshmen we can play on all special teams phases, and just get them out there and keep rolling,” Barnes said. “I’m guessing there will be three to four freshmen, maybe five, that you’re going to see thrown out there in Game 1. Whereas before, you would try to play a guy two games, bench him for a little bit, and then play him two more games, and keep their redshirt intact, and now you don’t have to worry about that.”

It’s a rule, coach Kirk Ferentz said, should have been implemented a long time ago.

“It probably made sense 30 years ago, quite frankly, in my mind,” Ferentz said. “Now with the roster reductions it’s more important because it’s really … it’s impactful.

“So having anybody out with an injury, it makes it a little tougher to practice, becomes a little bit of a challenge. The nice thing now is, if we think a freshman can help us, we’ve got a little room to not only experiment with it but also maybe experiment longer and give a guy more opportunity.”

Ferentz said giving players chances to play on special teams can determine a different positional direction than a player might have had otherwise.

“It gives you a real exposure to guys sometimes that maybe aren’t quite — it’s not happening for them at their given positions, but you see them play on special teams, and you can logically project they have real opportunities,” Ferentz said. “So I think that’s a great thing.”

Barnes said, though, that he has talked with Ferentz and the staff about the hard conversations that might need to be had with players who have been with the program, graduated, and still have one year of eligibility, but might not be contributors.

“If they’ve graduated, it might be time for them to move on and go to somebody else, because that’s just the world we’re in,” he said.

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A NEW YEAR: Ferentz is beginning his 28th season as Iowa’s head coach, and knew the question about if he’s thinking about retiring any time soon was probably going to come up.

“I don’t have much to tell you right there other than I feel good and certainly enjoy what I’m doing and enjoy the people I work with every day,” he said. “That’s about the extent of that one right now.”

Ferentz is the Big Ten’s winningest coach. He has a 209-128 record at Iowa and a 221-149 overall record in 30 seasons.

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KUETER’S PATH: Ben Kueter’s two-way journey at Iowa is now just wrestling only, Ferentz said.

Kueter came to Iowa in 2023 with the plan to play linebacker for the Hawkeyes as well as be a member of the football team. He announced a year later that he was taking a break from football to focus on his wrestling.

“He’s not on the roster,” Ferentz said. “My understanding is he’s just straight ahead wrestling and hopefully does great. I think he will, but that’s my understanding.”

Kueter is a two-time All-American for Iowa’s wrestling team. He was fifth last season in the NCAA Championships after an eighth-place finish in 2025. Kueter won the U20 World Wrestling Championship in 2022 and won USA Wrestling’s U20 men’s freestyle world team trials in 2022 and 2024.

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SMITH UPDATE: Wide receiver Terrence Smith is no longer on Iowa’s roster

Asked about his status, Ferentz said, “He enrolled over at Iowa Western this summer and unfortunately has hit a little bit of an obstacle health-wise there. We communicated about seven days ago. His attitude is great. He’s working hard and hopefully, gets healthy, and then gets back on the field and just keeps going.”

Smith redshirted last season as a freshman.

“We’re going to keep an eye on him,” Ferentz said. “He’s still a guy we have really good feelings about.”

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INJURY UPDATES: Ferentz said Iowa’s injury situation in camp is “not too bad,” but he expects two players, defensive back Kyler Gerardy and wide receiver Lance Begley to miss most, if not all, of this season.

Gerardy was injured on Wednesday, and Begley was injured last week.