Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Here's the winning percentage the previous 3 years before the head coaches I mentioned took over.
How bout the previous 5?
- Illinois (2013-2015) 0.405
- Syracuse (2013-2015) 0.378
- Virginia (2013-2015) 0.305
- Purdue (2014-2016) 0.222
- Iowa State (2013-2015) 0.222
- Washington State (2009-2011) 0.194
Previous 10?
- Syracuse (2011-2015) 0.435
- Illinois (2011-2015) 0.387
- Virginia (2011-2015) 0.377
- Iowa State (2011-2015) 0.322
- Purdue (2012-2016) 0.245
- Washington State (2007-2011) 0.229
- Washington State (2002-2011) 0.404
- Illinois (2006-2015) 0.403
- Virginia (2006-2015) 0.401
- Syracuse (2006-2015) 0.390
- Purdue (2007-2016) 0.349
- Iowa State (2006-2015) 0.333
Illinois isn't unique. Illinois isn't the only place that sucked for a long period of time. All of these programs were in as horrible, or worse, shape than Illinois any point over the past 10 years. Those programs however, finally had an AD that made a good hire. And those good hires haven't required even 4 years to get to 6 wins and a bowl. I mean, I'm not even including a program like UAB where literally the program was dead for 2 years, and they went to bowl games in years 1 and 2 after the program started back up. Or Baylor which went though a horrible scandal, lost every coach, a ton of players, and Matt Ruhle gets them to a bowl in year 2.
Again, Illinois isn't unique when it comes to losing. Where Illinois is unique, is in having incompetent ADs make horrible hiring decisions, and then compounding those mistakes sitting idly by while those coaches continue to auger the program further and further into the ground.
Agree with most of this, but a good AD can make an unlucky hire; that’s what I consider Lovie. Literally no one - including snooty negative nancies here - thought it’d be this bad. Period. We’d be quite foolish to run Whitman out of town, though I wouldn’t put it past us.