to act like he did." Ferentz would later issue an apology for this statement. Iowa Football’s Director of Recruiting and NFL Liaison, Tyler Barnes, is Ferentz’s son-in-law. Barnes attended Iowa and is married to Ferentz’s daughter Joanne. From 2009–2012, Barnes served as a student assistant, graduate assistant, and administrative assistant. Barnes left Iowa in 2013 shortly after it was revealed that Ferentz had pushed to extend Barnes’ contract for another year, without informing athletic director Gary Barta that Barnes was engaged to his daughter. Barnes returned to Iowa football in 2016. In a similar arrangement to Brian Ferentz’s, athletic director Gary Barta, not Ferentz, wrote his employment letter, and is his direct-report. This arrangement skirts University nepotism policies. “What we do is really competitive. It would really be counterintuitive to hire people who aren’t going to try to benefit and enhance our program,” Ferentz responded to questions about nepotism. “Any time we hire a coach, support personnel, we’re trying to get the guys best qualified to work at our place.” Barnes avoided questions about nepotism in his press conferences, stating he did not think it had an effect on his hiring “at all.” Public Housing While coaching at Iowa, Ferentz's son Brian, a scholarship football player, lived Section 8 housing—the only such housing in Iowa City designated for low income Iowans. As reported in 2005 by the Des Moines Register and ESPN's Outside the Lines, Brian and several other Iowa players paid "little to no rent" in publicly-subsidized housing set aside for poor families, elderly people, and those with disabilities. Kirk was making approximately $2 million at the time and was the state's highest-paid public employee. As part of his scholarship, Brian Ferentz received $700 per month for housing and other expenses. Politicians including US senator Tom Harkin and John Weicher, head of the Section 8 program for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, called for investigations and an end to the loophole. "I consider it to be an abuse of (the Section 8 housing program) if people who do not really need help are displacing the many who truly do need it," Harkin said in a statement. "It's a huge loophole that absolutely has to be fixed," said Linda Couch, deputy director for the National Low-Income Housing Association. "Hundreds of thousands of people have been on waiting lists for this kind of housing across the country, some of