Not that Robert's article makes a different point, but I don't think that the success of Lovie recruits should excuse how Lovie decimated the foundations of our in-state recruiting. With how much goodwill Lovie had in the Chicagoland area and throughout the state when he started the job, there was no reason to give up on the one territory where we can have an advantage entirely and conclude "oh, we will never be able to out recruit ND, Michigan, OSU, Wisconsin, Iowa, etc." This was such a preposterous white flag that has been brilliantly corrected by Bielema, and the fruits of those efforts appear to be coming soon.
Now, that nuance being acknowledged, I do think its very fair to now acknowledge Lovie and his staff did a good job finding good but raw athletes from Florida and Texas that needed the right coaching. Thank God they ended up getting that coaching, and I can't wait to see Illinois players all across the NFL for years to come!
Actually, with the NFL background, it shouldn't have been too surprising that the staff could find success in the scouting of recruiting, but not necessarily the politics of recruiting. Maybe that's how we can make sense of what went right and what went wrong.
IMHO The key point that Robert misses in his article is Josh Whitman...
As soon as he was hired, he made the bold Lovie hire... It obviously didn't pan out in the end, but I would argue was possibly as good as any choice that we could hire at the time (remember how we ended up with Beckman, after numerous coaches had spurned us?)
And Lovie DID push this program to a better place than we were. It became obvious though that we needed a change in the speed and move into a different gear or lose the momentum that we had begun to build.
I always felt bad about all of the hate thrown in Lovie's direction in the end. Some of it was probably deserved (Promoting Miles too soon, becoming HC and DC, ignoring recruiting in IL preferring FL), but he deserved some credit too.
Lovie's tenure also faced some bad luck beyond his control that contributed to his team not being more successful... (Bobby Roundtree... NCAA waiver for Luke... COVID years changes...)
In the end Josh, as many others, believed it was time for a change. He gave Lovie the option of retiring instead of firing him, I believe, as a token of appreciation for what he had done for the program.
Perhaps Lovie could have completed the turn around of the program within a decade or he would have eventually failed regardless, we will never know.
What we do know is that Josh made another home run hire with Bielema, and the program has kicked into the next gear...
What will happen next? when Ryan Walters leaves for his deserved HC position... Could Bielema be poached as Bill Self was?? What will happen then??? All I know is that I have full confidence in Josh Whitman and that's why I believe he's the missing key piece in Robert's article.