Nor is Youngstown State.
Coaching Carousel (Football)
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OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
Also put Governor’s State in there, too.
MustangWally
- Mayfield
This could be a long thread.
Doesn't Chicago State struggle hard financially? Why start the most expensive sports program to run? Seems odd.
Yeah. And the buy game model won’t work out as well on the football side for them (with the exception of getting a bunch of SEC teams calling to book the winless Cougars for week 13 games). They can’t schedule 3 buy games over 5 days like in basketball.
Buy games for football pay more than basketball. They will get a couple schools to pay close to 2 mil for a game.
Illwinsagain
- Cary, IL
Yes, much better to call Chicago State than lets say.... NIU. Just ask Notre Dame.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I can't speak to pre-2002 or so due to my age, but it HAS to be in my lifetime! While people were generally excited about the Lovie hire, he never actually had a good year, let alone two ... and things went downhill pretty fast. There was ALWAYS a sizable portion of fans who were ready to move on from Beckman as soon as he announced ... and it turns out they were right, lol. Even after the Rose Bowl season, Zook had multiple 2-10 seasons in his history here (i.e., the Rose Bowl was more of a surprise than a clear culmination of previous success), and that momentum wore off almost shockingly quickly. I was pretty young when Turner was here, so I am not sure how "secure" we felt about him after the Sugar Bowl season, but I find it somewhat telling that we didn't enter 2002 ranked preseason like we will this year. Plus, I seem to remember that there was always concern about his recruiting.
I cannot imagine people ever felt particularly confident in long term success under Tepper, but I was a toddler, haha. I also imagine that there was at least some uneasiness about Mackovic bolting for greener pastures (as he did) from the moment he arrived. Maybe Mike White? Something just seems so stable about what BB has built, though, that it does feel unique. The facts that he already left a program he had built up for more money somewhere else and got some humble pie, that he knows he's had his most success playing old school football in the Big Ten, his background growing up in Illinois as an Illini fan and his loyalty to Josh for giving him a chance at a major conference program and believing in him after he was fired by Arkansas ... I think that all also plays into this idea that he would be here to stay and cement a legacy.
Seriously, I know we are "Illinois Football" in the minds of too many folks, even among our own fans, but we are getting a taste at what Illini Football could be right now. We grew accustomed to thinking that 30k fans at games, poor recruiting and crap NIL was what we could reasonably expect here ... but just TWO winning seasons under Bret has us selling out multiple times/averaging closer to 55k fans per game, having our best recruiting class in YEARS and seemingly drastically increased NIL funding. Why would he leave? We have facilities, we have a big fan base, we have money, we have a great recruiting footprint, we have fans that actually have realistic/forgiving expectations and - most importantly - we have a special AD who will have your back 110%. Knock on wood and all, but I hope a new dawn is here where the Illinois Fighting Illini shouldn't expect to ever lose a coach to another program in any sport, period. Sure, it'll happen under some circumstances ... but we have the tools to win big in everything.
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
I kind of felt like 2002 with Turner was very much a "show me" type of year. We had already seen a "false turnaround" of sorts in 1999 (the year of the Micron Bowl), and then we fell back in 2000. Same thing with 2001 heading into 2002. At least for me, it did not feel as sustainable as things feel right now.
As I've said before, even an 8-4 type of season would be a big step forward for the program in my eyes. This year is all about cementing that consistency and sustainability. I don't think it will happen, but I would be pretty disappointed with a 5-7 or even a 6-6 season. This is probably the best I've felt about the Illinois program since the 1990 Citrus Bowl season. Right now, I also do not feel like Bielema is going anywhere. Of course, I also felt like Mackovic wasn't going anywhere. I just think he wanted to go back to being a football coach instead of the football coach/AD combo (which was always a head-scratching decision anyway).
Battle89
- Cary-Grove, the better Trojan team
Unusual for you to have a typo like this Fighter. The correct spelling is 'any sort of'.
It’s like having a baby to save the marriage.
MoCoMdIllini
- Montgomery County, Maryland
Kennesaw State now has a homecoming cupcake they can schedule.
A Hail Mary to get some much needed enrollment in the school? About 1,700 undergrads these days.
I went to grad school at UTSA (2009-2011) while they were ramping up their football program. Didn’t take them long to make a bowl game and beat us. It’s not an insurmountable obstacle.
RabidDawgClassic
- Los Angeles, CA
And calling convenient time outs benefitting the other side of the aisle.
Lou Tepper was a highly regarded DC and Sporting News one year chose him as one of the 5 top coordinators that would be a head coach. Lloyd Carr was also on that list. Tepper ceiling was as a DC, but at the time he was promoted to Illini head coach, there weren't reasons to question his ability to be a head coach. His coaching resume was better than some of his peers in big time football.
Complete joke of an institution that needs to be shut down. They need to be focusing much more on fixing academics than expanding athletics.
MoCoMdIllini
- Montgomery County, Maryland
I think I remember Northeastern. I hadn't realized it is part of this school.
Is Chicago State part of a system that includes Illinois State? (I'm thinking of the University of California and Cal State systems as a point of comparison.)
No Chicago State started off as a teachers school called Cook County Normal School.
CPS took control of it and it was called Chicago Teacher's College. In 1949 a branch campus called Chicago Teacher's College(Northside) was founded which eventually became Northeastern Illinois University when the state took over the school. Chicago Teacher's College eventually took the name Chicago State University in 1974.
Will be interesting to see if Matt Patricia can transfer NFL success to College : https://www.espn.com/college-footba...ohio-state-hire-ex-nfl-coach-matt-patricia-dc.
We tried that path with Lovie Smith and Hardy Nickerson. That failed.
We tried that path with Lovie Smith and Hardy Nickerson. That failed.
Battle89
- Cary-Grove, the better Trojan team
Your mileage may vary. I graduated in 89 and was still very close (as a fan) to the program for Tepper's tenure. That hire was not well received, he had no idea what to do on offense, and he wasted probably the best Illinois defense of all-time (by NFL draft standards if nothing else). Somewhere else in all these threads is a metrics analysis (not by me) that shows our 94 team as one of the best ever, above other seasons with much better records.
I also recall he got national notice because he required players of different races to live together, in a 90s version of DEI. I'm not here to debate the relative morality or effectiveness of such programs, but I'd prefer the head football coach be thinking about football, especially that you are allowed to score when you have the ball.
I also recall he got national notice because he required players of different races to live together, in a 90s version of DEI. I'm not here to debate the relative morality or effectiveness of such programs, but I'd prefer the head football coach be thinking about football, especially that you are allowed to score when you have the ball.
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