Lovie Smith Named Illinois Football Coach

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#1,002      

AeroIllini

A
3rd Floor talbot lab
AeroIllini
Lovie gave a circa 5 minute speech, fairly vanilla, said the student body was the most important group of fans and that he was open to suggestions from us.
 
#1,003      

Fillory

F
4th Floor Grainger
Fillory
Obelix said:
Given the state of our program, this is an excellent hire. Lovie has his faults but he is a strong coaching upgrade, with name recognition that will give us some PR boost, and with strong ties to Midwest and Florida, which hopefully will result in recruiting wins and upgrade in talent.
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And Texas, which is bigger than you think, considering A&M is hitting hard times and Texas continues to be in turmoil.
 
#1,004      

ivwilsoniv

I
Aurora, IL
ivwilsoniv
AutoPoster 3000 said:
"This, um, savior comes to Illinois with an NFL coaching record of 89-87, about as mediocre as it gets. After coaching the Bears to the Super Bowl in 2006, Smith has gone 60-68, which is worse, but when you’re coming off Tim Beckman’s clown act, I guess mediocrity and condescension is considered a step up in Champaign. Same goes for availability, apparently. Smith lands in Champaign after being fired from his last two NFL jobs."

"This, um, savior comes to USC with an NFL coaching record of 33-31, about as mediocre as it gets. After coaching the Patriots to an AFC East title in 1997, Carroll has gone 17-15, which is worse, but when you’re coming off Paul Hackett’s clown act, I guess mediocrity and condescension is considered a step up in University Park. Same goes for availability, apparently. Carroll lands in Los Angeles after being fired from his last two NFL jobs."

"This, um, savior comes to UCLA with an NFL coaching record of 31-33, about as mediocre as it gets. After coaching the Falcons to an NFC West title in 2004, Mora has gone 20-28, which is worse, but when you’re coming off Rick Neuheisel’s clown act, I guess mediocrity and condescension is considered a step up in Westwood. Same goes for availability, apparently. Mora lands in Los Angeles after being fired from his last two NFL jobs."

Hot take plagiarism alert!
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Where are those other two excerpts taken from? Other Rosenbloom articles or elsewhere?
 
#1,005      

AeroIllini

A
3rd Floor talbot lab
AeroIllini
One interesting thing was that he did not use the setup mic, he stood in the group which was cool
 
#1,010      

OneTime3

O
OneTime3
I still can't believe it, I was really expecting it to be a classic Illinois nut punch until this morning. I almost teared up at him getting introduced to the players, can't believe he came here - this program was literally bottom of the barrel in recent history.
 
#1,011      

GameOfThrows

G
GameOfThrows
AutoPoster 3000 said:
"This, um, savior comes to Illinois with an NFL coaching record of 89-87, about as mediocre as it gets. After coaching the Bears to the Super Bowl in 2006, Smith has gone 60-68, which is worse, but when you’re coming off Tim Beckman’s clown act, I guess mediocrity and condescension is considered a step up in Champaign. Same goes for availability, apparently. Smith lands in Champaign after being fired from his last two NFL jobs."

"This, um, savior comes to USC with an NFL coaching record of 33-31, about as mediocre as it gets. After coaching the Patriots to an AFC East title in 1997, Carroll has gone 17-15, which is worse, but when you’re coming off Paul Hackett’s clown act, I guess mediocrity and condescension is considered a step up in University Park. Same goes for availability, apparently. Carroll lands in Los Angeles after being fired from his last two NFL jobs."

"This, um, savior comes to UCLA with an NFL coaching record of 31-33, about as mediocre as it gets. After coaching the Falcons to an NFC West title in 2004, Mora has gone 20-28, which is worse, but when you’re coming off Rick Neuheisel’s clown act, I guess mediocrity and condescension is considered a step up in Westwood. Same goes for availability, apparently. Mora lands in Los Angeles after being fired from his last two NFL jobs."

Hot take plagiarism alert!
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And someone tell that clown that Nick Saban was 15-17 in the NFL. Meyer is afraid to coach at that level. Different beast. If you don't have an elite QB, mediocre is good. The coaching in the NFL is far superior at every position and every team, and besides QB, the talent level is spread out fairly evenly amongst all teams via the draft and salary cap.
 
#1,015      

UIGrad03

U
UIGrad03
mattcoldagelli said:
Of course, but the risk-free hire does not exist.

In a vacuum, we just had absolutely no business hiring someone of Lovie's caliber.

And when you get into the specifics - that he's a character-first type of coach following a player abuse scandal, that he's most well-known in Chicago and St. Louis, that he brings an end to the lack of diversity that has (fairly or unfairly) come to be associated with this position - it's just a start-to-finish coup for Josh Whitman.
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A few weeks ago you (and others) were mocking me because I said the Cubit deal was a good decision that would kick the can down the road and allow our permanent AD to make a bold move for his own coach. Now here you are pumping up this outstanding hire that was made possible by the very deal you so fervently decried. It's glorious.
 
#1,016      

IllinoisFanAtFSU

I
IllinoisFanAtFSU
For as long as I've been an Illinois fan, we've been a joke to other schools. Years of 7-6 back to back felt like success, to other schools (like FSU, where I am) that is failure. For the first time since 2007, we are relevant nationally. I hear that season ticket sales are skyrocketing, and IFund donations are flying in like crazy. I don't expect to be world beaters in year one, but man oh man is this exciting. It feels like all of Illini Nation is waking up and coming together over this hire. I actually teared up a little.

Thank you Josh. And thank you Lovie. Let's make our beloved even more special!
 
#1,017      

CoalCity

C
St Paul, MN
CoalCity
I wonder how much all the Illinois talk is costing in lost productivity in offices around the Midwest this morning! LOL
 
#1,018      

Oskee67

Oskee67
Champaign
Oskee67
champaignchris said:
Re: the Chicago media: I thought the Mully and Handly show on 670 this morning was quite positive about the both Whitman and the Lovie Smith hire this morning.
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National media: Mike and Mike in the morning was very positive today, as well.
 
#1,019      

IlliniCaboose

IlliniCaboose
IlliniCaboose
UIGrad03 said:
A few weeks ago you (and others) were mocking me because I said the Cubit deal was a good decision that would kick the can down the road and allow our permanent AD to make a bold move for his own coach. Now here you are pumping up this outstanding hire that was made possible by the very deal you so fervently decried. It's glorious.
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Just because this hire is phenomenal doesn't mean that the Cubit 2 year deal was any less stupid, Whitman said as much during the press conference.
I'm ecstatic about how things worked out, and all's well that ends well I guess, but that was still a bone-headed move.
 
#1,021      

CoalCity

C
St Paul, MN
CoalCity
IllinoisFanAtFSU said:
For as long as I've been an Illinois fan, we've been a joke to other schools. Years of 7-6 back to back felt like success, to other schools (like FSU, where I am) that is failure. For the first time since 2007, we are relevant nationally. I hear that season ticket sales are skyrocketing, and IFund donations are flying in like crazy. I don't expect to be world beaters in year one, but man oh man is this exciting. It feels like all of Illini Nation is waking up and coming together over this hire. I actually teared up a little.

Thank you Josh. And thank you Lovie. Let's make our beloved even more special!
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THIS! A buddy of mine and I were talking this morning about how nothing like this had happened at Illinois in our lifetimes (he's 56, I'm 60). This is just an incredible start to the Whitman era and hopefully this positive energy will bleed over to the basketball program, particularly the recruiting efforts going on. This decisive bold action is just so un-Illinois that we're all pretty much still reeling.

Will be very interesting to see where we are in 3 years. Will we have climbed to the middle of the pack in the B1G, or will we (hopefully) be scaring the crap out of the bluebloods in both football and basketball?

:chief::hailtotheorange::ah::thumb::ms:
 
#1,023      

Second and Chalmers

S
Second and Chalmers
UIGrad03 said:
A few weeks ago you (and others) were mocking me because I said the Cubit deal was a good decision that would kick the can down the road and allow our permanent AD to make a bold move for his own coach. Now here you are pumping up this outstanding hire that was made possible by the very deal you so fervently decried. It's glorious.
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That deal was not made with a move like this in mind. It's a tremendous stroke of luck that we happened to hire an AD who has existing connections to the strongest free agent coach on the market and that coach happened to be willing to take the job.

After the last 72 hours, I have every confidence that in other hypothetical worlds, Whitman would have gotten Dino Babers all the resources he would have needed to succeed, or would have made an outstanding hire after firing Cubit in December.
 
#1,025      

Paul Kleevage

P
Paul Kleevage
UIGrad03 said:
A few weeks ago you (and others) were mocking me because I said the Cubit deal was a good decision that would kick the can down the road and allow our permanent AD to make a bold move for his own coach. Now here you are pumping up this outstanding hire that was made possible by the very deal you so fervently decried. It's glorious.
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Does anyone know of a way to get UIGrad03's posting history out to various message boards and media outlets? It just doesn't seem fair that he's forced to pat himself on the back...others should be doing this for him.
 
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