INDIANAPOLIS — As Iowa football has upgraded its roster in the offseason via the transfer portal, Kirk Ferentz also has received an upgrade at his Iowa City home.

“We got YouTube TV, so I get ESPN News, not just 1 and 2 like we used to have,” said Ferentz, the state’s highest-paid public employee. “Mary has opened the budget up a little bit.”

With that “really fancy TV system,” Ferentz can’t help but see sports betting odds.

“They got lines on the opening day of college football games on the left,” Ferentz said. “I don’t pay attention to that stuff. Now, I am.”

So it is no surprise to him to see college athletes be “attracted to that stuff.”

The outcome for the Iowa football players who may have participated in sports betting is not quite as clear, though, almost three months after Iowa announced the investigation.

The investigation involves “not a large number” of Iowa football players, Ferentz said Wednesday at the Big Ten’s football media days. Beyond that, details of Iowa’s sports gambling investigation remain unclear.

Beth Goetz, who will officially take over as interim athletics director on Aug. 1, said Iowa is looking to “resolve it as quickly as we can.” She did not share a specific timeline for when it will be resolved, though.

“We’re still working through that process,” Goetz said in a one-on-one interview with The Gazette. “We want to be able to understand exactly what that will look like for them in terms of training and competition this coming year.”

Goetz said the department has encouraged athletes involved “to be as cooperative as they can be.”

Ferentz has received “some information” during the investigation, but “information has been pretty sporadic.”

“We as coaches were pretty much out of all this,” Ferentz said. “Because it’s really about the law firm that’s working with the players and then the NCAA.”

Defensive lineman Noah Shannon is the only football player confirmed to be involved in the investigation. He was initially going to attend this week’s conference media day, but passed on the opportunity because of the investigation.

“He’s just a tremendous young man,” Ferentz said of Shannon. “He feels badly that he’s even involved in this.”

Seeing Shannon’s pain “made all of us feel bad,” Ferentz said.

“He hasn’t hurt anybody,” Ferentz said. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

From a football standpoint, Ferentz said the investigative process has not caused any players to miss offseason training.

Goetz and Ferentz said they have learned a lot about sports betting in recent months.

“I never really paid attention to it, other than we signed a form,” Ferentz said. “Probably the same form we signed when I was playing.”

Goetz sees how “sports gaming has just taken off” and “how socially acceptable it is across the country” as factors leading to Iowa’s sports gambling situation — factors she hopes are “taken into consideration” as Iowa awaits its NCAA fate.

Ferentz said this is an opportunity for the NCAA to rethink the “quote-unquote punishments or penalties” to be “fair and relevant to the world we’re living in right now.”

“I’ve got my middle son telling me the other day they cover lines on College GameDay before games,” Ferentz said. “So it’s just an illustration of the world we’re living in right now. It’s not going away. It’s going to continue to grow.”

The 25th-year Iowa head coach compared the approach he’d like the NCAA to take to what the organization has done around drug testing in past years.

“You have marijuana legal in how many states,” Ferentz said. “I’m not supporting marijuana usage either, but I think we have to be reasonable about how we do it.”

The NCAA revised its guidance surrounding sports wagering violations earlier this summer, which “encouraged” Ferentz.

“That, to me, is a signal that they are paying attention to what’s going on,” Ferentz said.

Ferentz said his athletes who are under investigation “aren’t the only ones who could be under investigation.”

Iowa has 26 current athletes across football, men’s basketball, baseball, men’s wrestling and men’s track and field involved in the investigation, the university said in May.

“Having some parameters and rules around sports gambling is incredibly important to protect the integrity of our games — there’s no doubt about that,” Goetz said. “We do understand what the rules are.”

Goetz wants to “revamp” Iowa’s current education to athletes surrounding the NCAA’s gambling rules.

“When you have something like this that pops up, it’s a great opportunity to look at what processes that you do have in place and how you can make those better,” Goetz said. “Certainly, this has served as a reminder for everybody in Iowa and really everybody across the country about the rules around wagering for college student-athletes.”

Part of Goetz’s plan involves having gambling education that will “reach student-athletes where they are.”

“Student-athletes sign off on a lot of different forms,” Goetz said. “Understanding the policies — like many of us, that’s an overwhelming piece of the puzzle.”

Goetz also mentioned reminders sent to athletes around popular betting times of the year, such as March Madness.

“Beefing up those types of reminders I think is really, really critical for us,” Goetz said.

For now, though, Shannon and other Iowa athletes are still awaiting their fates.

“Long story short, we don’t know what the outcome is going to be,” Ferentz said.

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