DC Bobby Hauck out at Illinois

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#77      
JJE
I was really skeptical when we hired BB, but what he has done here has been fantastic.

That said, Henry and Hauck were both head scratchers from the get go.

Don’t overthink it on this next hire.
 
#78      
Mr. Tibbs
ORANGEANDBLUE2011 said:
Any guesses on who takes the lead?
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Happy Lovie Smith GIF by Fighting Illini Athletics

🤣
 
#80      
Joel Goodson
mhuml32 said:
What a mess. Hauck is officially a punch line that will be mentioned for decades on here. Plenty of fair criticism to go around on how the program ended up in the current space, but good to pull the plug. It’s the right call to move on but this is going to be a mess for 12-18 months because of how poorly this hire was staged and unfolded.

A bunch of defensive assistants that are Hauck disciples are now marooned on the staff with very low chances of sticking around after December. There’s a chance this (somehow) gets worse before it gets better.
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not necessarily. hiring from the pool is largely a timing issue. we should be able to get our new DC before the rush is on. we'll see, but I'm guessing Coach B is going to bring in a good DC
 
#88      
FightinILL
I was really skeptical when we hired BB, but what he has done here has been fantastic.

That said, Henry and Hauck were both head scratchers from the get go.

Don’t overthink it on this next hire.
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Yes. This is on Bret. 100%
 
#93      
Lakes333
The 3-5-5 would be hard to stop!
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Not sure we could stop anybody even with 13 players. Other then Bailey, there's just no top notch talent.
 
#94      
illinois_hustle
What happened?! I mean all Hauck would say is that he fell in love with coaching again, etc. I know the defense has been poor but honestly we didn’t get rolled like we did last year against Indiana. This is strange for Bret. Must’ve been some verbal disrespect somewhere between Hauck and Bret and or the players or Josh... If someone knows please spill it!
 
#95      
illiram
I will be the new Def Coordinator salary free if we take GIES off of the stadium.
 
#96      
fuddrules
WeWillWhen said:
Cooper and Bradford both have some experience calling this system while at Montana, and I think Cooper has some prior DC experience at Idaho State? Hardly big time experience.
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I'm sure they were calling plays at Illinois. One of the two. They funneled plays through Cooper for a reason.
 
#97      
ChiefGritty

"Dealing with what college football has become is not always enjoyable as a head coach," Hauck said. "I just haven't been enjoying it enough. I want to enjoy my career and my job. A lot of the head coach stuff in current day, Division I college football is not enjoyable.

"Dealing with agents and the transient nature of this and the lack of forward thinking by young people -- which it's never been a strong suit for centuries for young people, but now when they've got adults pushing them and pulling them in different directions -- I kind of got tired of all that, the dealing with agents and the transient nature of it. Straw that broke the camel's back, there was nothing like that. This has been residual."

"I went decades with looking forward to going to the office," Hauck said. "Not everybody's that blessed in their life where they absolutely love what they do. There's different challenges every day in this job and beyond winning and losing, but I always loved facing that challenge and the competitiveness of keeping score but also the challenge of developing young men and all those things.

"But as college football has changed over the last couple of years, I've started to embrace my shelf life ending at some point. I've had more days where I didn't enjoy coming to work very recently."
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Hauck is one of many college coaches walking away from the profession based on feelings like that. It's a hard job in the best of times and for the ones who have been successful enough to walk away on their own terms, it's very understandable that they would do so as things change so radically.

On both the Hauck side and the Illinois side, the idea that being a Big Ten defensive coordinator in 2026 was going to be the solution to what Hauck was feeling was extremely naive and misbegotten and I know a lot of us had a really bad feeling about this the moment we saw these comments.

The business is what it is. There is zero room for doubt or half-measures and all parties knew better than to think this could be an exception.
 
#100      
OskieWowWow
illinois_hustle said:
What happened?! I mean all Hauck would say is that he fell in love with coaching again, etc. I know the defense has been poor but honestly we didn’t get rolled like we did last year against Indiana. This is strange for Bret. Must’ve been some verbal disrespect somewhere between Hauck and Bret and or the players or Josh... If someone knows please spill it!
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Has to be some kind of personality conflict behind the scenes on top of being bad at his job to have it be so sudden vs just waiting till the end of the season
 
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