Retiring Northern Iowa coach Mark Farley: The purity of college football is gone

Aside from four years spent as Kansas's linebackers coach, Mark Farley has spent his entire adult life as a Northern Iowa Panther. 

Growing up 100 miles away from UNI's campus, Farley came to Cedar Falls to play linebacker in 1983, led the team in tackles twice, made the all-conference team three times, made two All-America and Academic All-America teams, won a conference co-Defensive Player of the Year award, and then joined the coaching staff as a GA upon graduation. He ascended to linebackers coach in 1989, stayed until Kansas hired him to the same spot in 1997, then returned as head coach in 2001. 

In the 24 seasons since, Farley has won or shared seven conference titles and reached 13 Division I-AA/FCS playoffs, peaking with a title game berth in 2005 with two more semifinal appearances and five quarterfinal appearances. 

Farley essentially is UNI football. He's FCS Mike Gundy, without the wheels-off press conferences. 

Farley's near 40-year run with the program ends Nov. 23. Last week he announced his retirement effective the end of the season, which will be at the conclusion of next week's Indiana State game, with the Panthers at 2-8 on the season. 

"The purity is gone. And that's the sad part of it, because we've got to have a purpose to college athletics. Maybe we've lost the sight of what the purpose of college athletics is. For me, that's giving Iowa farm kids the chance to go play college football and get a college degree."

On the one hand, for a dozen years now yours truly has gone to the AFCA convention and heard coaches tell each other some version of "Adapt or die" more times than I can count. On the other, college football has or will change more in this current 5-year period than it did in the five decades before.

At 61, one can see why Farley decided coaching was no longer for him. Someone else will eagerly take his place. Such is the circle of life.

In the meantime, though, Farley's career deserves to be celebrated: 40-plus years in college football, and 24 years of leadership to his alma mater have resulted in 181 wins, a case full of trophies, and countless Iowa farm boys earning college degrees. 

Whether college football is better, worse or simply different as it moves into a more fully professionalized era belongs to the eye of the beholder, but one thing is certain: college football of the 1980s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s and the first half of the 2020s was better because Mark Farley was a part of it, and that more than earned him the right to say his piece before he goes.

As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.