Herman is the dumbest coach in college football.
If we hire Bielema, we need to just retire from football
Harrell would be good for IW
Herman was the hottest college coach available for hire, in December 2016. White hot at the time.
I lived in Dallas over the last 38 years and watched many Longhorn games. His in game coaching decisions were Jason Garrett like.
I live in SC, and fans here are very happy with the hire
outside Of Lovie
I mean Dabo Sweeney was a WR coach that had never called a play when he took over Clemson at 39 and that turned out pretty good for everyone. If NS has the chops I would rather jump in too early than to late.
Shane Beamer has been on a bunch of staffs and it’s not like his dad hired him at SC. Not a whole lot of nepotism in this hire. Nepotism is Ryan Cubit or Miles Smith being completely unqualified but hired by their dad to their staff.
Point taken, but Dabo at that point had also been a position coach for over a decade and had an assistant head coach title. Not the same as NS.
I heard you on Robert's podcast and I thought you did a good job. I mentioned Bielema here too in the post game thread and was booed out of the building lol....But I mean, for me I just want wins too. I don't care about a coach's personality. And I don't think college football in the Big 10 is that complicated. It's simple to me. Illinois has to be honest about where it is with recruiting attainable athletes. And IMO,, we are in a place where we are never going to be a 4 or 5 star destination mainly because it's a numbers game, and there aren't enough of those kids in our vicinity to pull them. So the notion we are going to hire a young go get em recruiter (similar to Minnesota tried with Tim Brewster) isn't going to work. As for people that want to run air raid or some exotic spread offense, can't do that either in the Big 10 given the weather conditions. So I see our paths to becoming a good football program limited. It's basically the NW, Iowa, WI path. Experienced coordinators that know what they are doing, familiar with recruiting within our region, and developing 3 star talent. For me, a guy like Bielema can check all those boxes. He's going to bring in a really good staff, he knows what wins in the Big 10, and then the issue is simply replicating what he had at Wisconsin at Illinois. And I just don't see why he couldn't do that. Bielema would be the most accomplished head coach we've ever hired. And he's only 50. Nick Saban is pushing 70.
I agree and I’d be much more patient with a guy like him finding his way than someone like Lovie who has had plenty of time and shows little sign he is willing to grow into the job.
Bielema's 5 year SEC conference record at Arkansas was 11-29. They were 21-19 in the SEC the 5 years before he arrived. No thanks.
I think this thread has actually been relatively tame in expectations. We aren't sniffing Fickel. I'm not sure who the next big time coaches are. Campbell could go blue blood but nobody would even consider him an option outside of a top 5 program. I'm not sure who I'm missing that is open for a coaching job and would never consider us. There's plenty of options that I think would consider us, and I've mentioned some previously. The MAC guys obviously: Leipold and Lewis. If Tom Herman is fired, I think he could potentially consider us. Not sure how good a coach he actually is though. Either Monken brother would probably come here: Todd currently OC at UGA, Jeff HC at Army. I think Joe Moorhead would have interest if we called. He's OC at Oregon, was HC as Miss St and OC at Penn State. At Alabama, I'd reach out to Sarkisian but he's probably in a tier above us and is more of a west coast guy, probably waiting out a decent PAC job. Butch Jones could get another shot. There's other coordinators that I just don't know a ton about like Harrell or Grinch. I know Clark Lea has been mentioned by some, DC at ND. I wouldn't mind reaching out to Lea's mentor, Mike Elko, DC at A&M. I don't know much about the SunBelt coaches either, but usually they wait for SEC jobs. There's a lot out there, up to JW to do his homework and try to figure out who would fit best.
I watched The Rope Friday night. Had never seen it before but recorded a bunch of Hitchcock films last week when they were doing a marathon on TMC or something. As I was reading this thread just now having never heard of Loeb and Leopold I thought oh wow this kinda sounds like The Rope! And then confirmed. Quite a coincidence.
It would be out of character for JW to drag this out. Both BU and LS were out-of-the-blue/quick hires (at least that’s how they seemed to me, but I was way dumber back then because I had not been to this blog yet and you all have made me much smarter and more awesome).
That's a really good point. The Lovie move was made at such a weird time of year and he was not working at the time, and Underwood was unhappy with his contract and looking to bounce. Those circumstances seem kind of rare, but yeah JW definitely kept those hires out of the public eye and came together relatively quickly. I feel like due to the circumstances and environment, this may go down in a more "normal" way, although I bet JW will move quickly once he makes his decision. Illinois football is not at the level of Illinois basketball. We aren't going to secretly pry away a sitting P5 coach, and this change would happen during the normal coaching carousel. Even if JW keeps it quiet, there's going to be rumors out there (even if completely unsubstantiated).
