Report: Iowa football to hire Tulane's George Barnett as offensive line coach

Iowa is on the verge of filling one of its two assistant-coach vacancies with a Midwest native.

Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel reported Thursday morning that the Hawkeyes were set to hire Tulane offensive coach George Barnett as its next offensive line coach. Barnett spent the last seven seasons at Miami of Ohio, where he was the co-offensive coordinator and O-line coach, before being hired at Tulane in December.

The University of Iowa could not confirm the move on Thursday morning when asked.

Barnett is from Decatur, Illinois. He once worked under longtime offensive-line coach Harry Hiestand, a coach that Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz has always highly respected. He coached under Hiestand at Illinois in 2004. A collection of videos posted by Miami of Ohio in May 2020 describe Barnett as having a personal coaching style with high expectations.

The Hawkeyes have been looking to backfill the departures of offensive line coach Tim Polasek (to Wyoming) and running backs coach Derrick Foster (to the Los Angeles Chargers) for the past month.