So let's hit a few points of that
- Paying Lovie Smith $4 million a season to be a checked-out CEO with little strategic input and mediocre recruiting ability is a senseless waste of money. How can we "afford" that, when we could hire someone else who could provide more value for less money?
- Lovie was a hot up and comer? Not sure what you even mean by that.
- It's year 4 for Lovie. Ron Zook was here for 7 years. Ron Turner was here for 8. Illinois has never had a quick hook, ever. Maybe being quick to fire for poor performance is a bad idea, maybe it's a good one, I'm genuinely unsure myself, but it is a strategy that has *never* been tried at Illinois, undeniable objective fact, period.
- Since people seem to be impressed with what's going on with Herm Edwards at Arizona State, worth pointing out that they have fired 5 head coaches in a row, none of whom had a losing record at the school. None of them have held a D1 head coaching job since. It's a popular claim that this should destroy the program and make it a toxic waste site no coach would touch with a 10 foot pole, but that claim lacks evidence.