Illini Football 2026

#277      
aaeismacgychel
bluemountain said:
No way....Tepper was far worse. He inherited a really strong program from Mackovic and ran it into the ground. An average coach would have won 2-3 games more a year than Tepper did.

Beckman was a clown, but he inherited a mediocre team and left a team in similar shape when he was fired - his last 2 seasons were very comparable to Zook's last 2 seasons.

Moeller was just about as bad as Tepper. He inherited a solid program from Blackman and within 2 years we were playing a 0-0 tie against the worst team in D-1
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To get to this conclusion you really have to ignore the absolute reputational mess and legal bind Beckman put us in. There's a difference between being a bad coach making a great team mediocre, and a coach that makes your mediocre team a laughingstock and your program a poison pill. Tepper wasn't good but you give Beckman the same exact conditions and he almost certainly would've gotten our entire athletic program the death penalty during that time with how big the microscope was on us at that point.

The fact that we got some credibility back to the program and the NCAA backed off a bit after the Beckman tenure is more a testament to how Lovie cleaned up the toxicity surrounding the program than anything Beckman did or left us with.
 
#280      
WolfpackIllini
(takes a good gulp of orange koolaid)
You know, we will have 5 games under our belt when Oregon comes to Champaign.
We should be pretty gelled by then. If we are healthy, and get a bounce or two,
hey, anything can happen. So, I like our chances! Exciting times!
(returns to koolaid)
 
#281      
FlyingIlliniFan
aaeismacgychel said:
To get to this conclusion you really have to ignore the absolute reputational mess and legal bind Beckman put us in. There's a difference between being a bad coach making a great team mediocre, and a coach that makes your mediocre team a laughingstock and your program a poison pill. Tepper wasn't good but you give Beckman the same exact conditions and he almost certainly would've gotten our entire athletic program the death penalty during that time with how big the microscope was on us at that point.

The fact that we got some credibility back to the program and the NCAA backed off a bit after the Beckman tenure is more a testament to how Lovie cleaned up the toxicity surrounding the program than anything Beckman did or left us with.
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Lovie put in a skeleton of a good organization in pretty short order, which was a remarkable feat, I thought...He just didn't actually fill it up with, y'know, people. Recruited as if the roster limit was 55, not 85, and didn't bother to finish building a coaching staff before he got bored with the whole endeavor. But the change in professionalism and organization was a non-trivial step at a time that was not a foregone conclusion.
 
#282      
lstewart53x3
WolfpackIllini said:
(takes a good gulp of orange koolaid)
You know, we will have 5 games under our belt when Oregon comes to Champaign.
We should be pretty gelled by then. If we are healthy, and get a bounce or two,
hey, anything can happen. So, I like our chances! Exciting times!
(returns to koolaid)
Click to expand...
Using SP+, Oregon’s #2 at +29.2 and we’re #28 at +10.4, so we’ll likely be two touchdown dogs. There’s as big of a gap between Oregon and us and as there is between us and #100 Temple.
 
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