IOWA CITY -- Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz covered a lot of ground with the following statement Wednesday at his news conference kicking off spring practice:

"I'm optimistic we'll improve," he said, "but it's easy to talk. We have to do the work. We have to get it done."

He could have been talking about the Hawkeyes' performance on the field, where they were wildly inconsistent last season en route to a 6-6 finish, which left them home for bowl season for the first time since 2000.

But Ferentz was referring to his team's performance off the field, where the Hawkeyes have been all too consistent in wracking up citations in the past year.

Ferentz, entering his 10th season as Iowa's head coach, announced Wednesday he and director of athletics Gary Barta plan to create a position on the football staff for what Ferentz called a "life skills mentor."

"It will be a person who will help pull ideas together," Ferentz said. "We have endless resources in our community and state -- former players, community members, state members who could be helpful in mentoring our players. We're looking to have someone to coordinate that."

It was this time last spring when former Hawkeye Ryan Bain was arrested for disorderly conduct, triggering a series of events that saw 14 Iowa players arrested or ticketed 19 times in a span of 10 months.

The charges included credit card fraud, domestic assault, drunken driving, theft, underage possession of alcohol and, most recently, possession of marijuana and prescription drugs.

Ferentz dismissed six players from the team. Two others transferred after being implicated in the investigation of an alleged sexual assault on campus, an investigation in which no charges have been filed.

Ferentz said it is time to change the culture of the program, and he expects a "life skills mentor" to play a major role in educating incoming players about decision making and also to help the coaching staff weed out players who can't walk the line.

"The thing I really struggle with is the repeat mistakes," Ferentz said. "It probably either means you have a problem, you just don't care or you're too dumb to get it. We'll deal with guys who have problems - we've done that in the past - but if it's the other two categories -

"The culture that gets established somewhere is extremely important. At some given point, the culture has to change. I hope we can look back and say the line of demarcation is here. At some point, that has to happen. If it doesn't, we're not going to be successful.

"Our public image is very important. I think it's tied to winning."

Winning is something the Hawkeyes haven't done as much as Ferentz would like. Iowa is just 19-18 the past three seasons after going 31-7 and winning a pair of Big Ten championships from 2002-04.

The process of rebuilding started with a late-afternoon practice Wednesday and will continue with 14 more workouts over the next month. The Hawkeyes will wrap spring drills with an open practice April 19 at Kinnick Stadium.

Contact Eric Page at (563) 383-2277 or epage@qctimes.com.