All promised to return.

Kirk Ferentz takes care of his own.Midst the hoopla about the gazillion-dollar "contract" the football coach signed earlier this month with the University of Iowa, there was little note of Section 4 B, "Additional Compensation for Assistant Coaches." But it's worth noting.

At a time when the university is agonizing over whether to give faculty members a 1 percent raise or a 2 percent raise, at a time when union members and many others were forced to take five-day "furloughs," at a time when Iowa's parents are hit with tuition increases of 6 percent to 12 percent for their kids at the state universities, and at a time when the Legislature has been cutting back on appropriations to the universities, Coach Ferentz talked the university into giving extraordinarily high pay increases for 12 of his 25 or so assistants.

Annually.

For 10 years.

The 12 coaches, who average about $190,000 a year, merely have to coach the team to a mediocre year in order to get an 8 percent annual raise. That is, they have to win just six of the 12 games, be invited to a bowl (any bowl), and make sure that 55 percent of their players graduate within six years, an easy hurdle. If the team finishes in the top 25 in the nation, the raises will be 10 percent. The scale goes up to a maximum of 20 percent if the team is the national champion.

That's not all. If the team shares the conference championship, the twelve get a bonus of an extra half-month's pay; if they win it outright, they get a month's pay. If they go to a bowl, besides the pay raise they get an additional bonus of at least one month's salary; if it's a BCS bowl, they get a bonus of two-and-a-half-months' salary, and if it's the national title game, they get a bonus of three months' salary.

There's more. If the team is selected for even a low-tier bowl and finishes at least in the top 25 ranked teams, Coach Ferentz is given a bonus pool of $85,000 to $200,000 to distribute among the coaches and a handful of others. Also, the 12 coaches this year get to share in a $300,000 "signing bonus."

Oh, one other thing: the coaches all get free membership in the University Club.

If the raises over the next decade average 10 percent -- and that's probably a low number -- Ken O'Keefe, the offensive coordinator, will be making $675,000 at the end of Coach Ferentz' "contract." That's his base. It doesn't include bonuses that could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the decade.

Coach O'Keefe currently makes around $260,000, according to state records. The average faculty member at the University of Iowa makes $96,482 a year. Marilynne Robinson, a full professor who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction a few years ago, earns $141,500 a year, less than the $149,000 paid to the school's coach of the tight ends. Norbert Pienta, a full professor of chemistry who was one of four recipients of the outstanding-teaching award this year, makes $117,000, less than half the $246,840 paid to Chris Doyle, who oversees strength and conditioning for the team. Coach Ferentz is the highest-paid coach in the Big 10. Iowa's faculty ranks seventh in pay in the Big 10. In the fiscal year just ended, the average faculty pay increase was -- zero.

As for Ferentz himself, his "contract" is no contract at all. The university has agreed to pay him a base of nearly $4 million a year for 10 years and bonuses that could total $1.7 million if Iowa is the national champion, as well as supplying him with two cars (plus insurance for them), 35 hours a year of private-jet travel for personal use, and his own box at Kinnick Stadium, and if the university decides to fire Ferentz without cause -- and "cause" does not include fielding a lousy team -- the coach can collect 75 percent of his annual guaranteed amount for each of the remaining years of the contract. If he gets a big-paying job elsewhere, the university still has to pay.

But if Ferentz decides to leave on his own -- at any time for any reason -- there is no penalty. He owes the university nothing. His new employer owes the university nothing. That's the "contract." ...

"They tackled better than us, they caught better than us, they ran better than us, and that's unfortunate ... that was the ballgame," Rodriguez said.