NEWS AND NOTES FROM KIRK FERENTZ'S PRESSER AT THE B1G FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYS

Kirk Ferentz didn't say a whole lot during his press conference at the Big Ten media days this afternoon.  But he did give us a few highlights:

ON NEBRASKA JOINING THE BIG TEN:

“What a tremendous program and university, and tremendous people they have. So that’s great for the conference.”

“I remember coming to Iowa and in western Iowa there used to be more Nebraska fans than Iowa fans in that part of the state. Hopefully that’s changed, but obviously it’s great for our state to have them in the conference.”

ON ADJUSTING ACADEMIC REQUIREMENTS:

“The big thing is for young people to understand at an early age the value of doing well and doing well early.”

ON WINNING CLOSE GAMES:

“The easy thing to do is to focus on the last 2 or 4 minutes of a game, and sometimes that’s where you need to focus. But sometimes you squander opportunities in the first half and that’s the problem.”

“You can never know what play is going determine a game.”