Agree. Based on the entirety of the post, I was taking ILL_INI's comments as fun and jokey, but my sarcasm meter may be off. 0% chance Michigan would go after Lewis. I think the 2 names you mention make the most sense for them, although I'm not sure either is really an upgrade from Harbaugh, but I'm probably higher on Harbaugh than most.
I feel like this has happened before for bowl games. Vic Koenig was interim coach. Was beckman hired already?
Yeah. It's pretty typical with bowl games and a normal college schedule. Normally the season is over around thanksgiving, giving at least a couple weeks of hiring a new coach and the early signing period. Adding the December signing period threw a wrench into the whole process but nothing quite like this year, with regular seasons literally not ending until after early signing day.
I completely spaced that our schedule goes even later, thanks for reminding me. Lots to consider here. Firing your coach during the season is one thing, but will another coach be willing to leave his current school during the season? Add to that the balance between giving the new coach as much time as possible to recruit, while wanting as much of a body of work as possible to evaluate (especially important for Lewis).
Yeah. I had completely forgotten about the early signing period, so thanks for reminding me. This year is just such a mess.
Sorry to quote you again. It's just so crazy that the last "normal" coaching change for Illinois (Zook to Beckman) might as well have been 100 years ago based how much the environment changed. That was a very standard, fired at end of year, hire new coach a few weeks later, a couple months of finalizing your staff and recruiting class. This year there's no time, everything is so condensed and overlapping. I think the circumstances make a firing before the end of the season very likely, especially if we lose to Rutgers and/or Nebraska. I have no idea how the hiring would go though. Ideally you'd want the new coach in before early signing day, but that's basically during most teams regular season. It's really gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. If Sean Lewis is a front runner, the MAC season is only 6 games as is. If you need to hire him with enough time before signing day, we're talking what, like a 4 game season for him? Better do a ton of homework on him because that's a very limited resume. Also their 4th game is Buffalo (another coaching candidate). This is just all so wild.
Rittenberg hates Illinois. When he was blogger for the Big 10, his posts were pretty negative. It was hard for him to write anything remotely close to positive. But those two coaches are ones to keep an eye on.
Your second most likely scenario is actually the most likely scenario to happen.
If we offered him $2.5MM + $2MM for Lovie's butyout we would still be $500,000 favorable. Is this sounds like a win-win where we could inject some excitement, build for the future, and save some $
He started off at the Daily Herald in the NW suburbs. I don't remember him coming off as anti-Illinois, but he rarely had anything good to say
Let’s be honest. There’s rarely anything good to say about Illinois football.
Lovie's had 5 years to prove he can't coach. The financial constraints are much lower than they would have been a year ago and without a change we will be dead in the water in terms of recruitng and attendance for another year. This will be his last year here
I am not really concerned with how a new coach impacts recruiting THIS year. With everyone basically getting an extra year, I think that this year is a freebie. I am more concerned with coaching ability and retaining players.
That would be the lowest salary in the B1G (per this article https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/salaries/) I get that it is a 568% increase, but Locksley is the only one close to that, and one of only 2 coaches under $4M/year.
Same article I found. I think 2.5 is plenty reasonable for a MAC coach. The rest of the B1G are all somewhat proven guys who have been given recent extensions/raises, or guys that required a pretty high price like Frost or Tucker. Nobody in any conference is going to give a MAC or similar-level HC that's making less than 500K, 3-4 mil per year right away.
It's going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out. I agree that there's not much hope for significant recruiting impact on this year's class, but as far as I know, the early signing period is still happening. It would be nice to have the new coach at least able to talk some of the current recruits into staying or get out there and get other recruits to hold off on signing at other places until the spring so as to give Illinois a look.
There were positive things to say about Illinois football? Maybe he was right?
They will be free to go play in the MAC or where ever their other non-P5 offers were. I'm sure a lot of them will stick it out to be in the big ten
Yeah that's true. We weren't exactly putting together a class of all-Americans. We were the strongest offer for most of the kids in this class.
