I think he is saying in a normal year we could be 5-5 with 2 games left to become bowl eligible for the second year in a row. The eternal optimist sees 2 more wins plus a bowl win=8 win season. But everyone wants to talk about firing the coach before playing the games.
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I wonder if this is an indication that Doug Kramer will be back next year?
This NFL veteran (who knows the game and has a direct pipeline into the Illini locker room) is saying that in a non-COVID year, we’d have been no worse than 7 - 4 headed to NW: the 3 non-con wins, plus Purdue and Minny. Wonder if that would have stopped the Lovie haters.
Sorry, but the way to evaluate our "problem" is not to blindly accept what might be said by someone "with a direct pipeline into the Illini locker room" who has a personal interest in wanting to believe that Lovie has succeeded. We need to consider the obvious fact that everyone else in the conference, and all of the media and pundits, concluded pre-season that we would finish last in our conference. They were correct. Lovie has been a failure as a college coach, any objective person realizes this, and we need to make a change.
I laugh when someone says, "Lovie Haters". Fans are tired of the regression under this staff and the endless excuses provided for a P5 HC making 5mil a year. The Eastern Michigan game should prove there are no guaranteed nonconference wins for a Lovie Smith coached team. Recruiting is terrible and no signs of it getting any better. The fear now is, do we get more incoming recruits than players who decide to transfer out. Change is needed in a bad way.
Being 7-4 would probably make a bit of a difference but we know the base get antsy in long losing streaks and we would have started out with 3 non conference wins and the gotten two conference wins and then went on to a losing streak and we would be here talking again. I don't think you could chalk up Minny as even a toss up. I know we didn't have an QBs but they beat the pants off of us 2 years in a row and I don't think Peter's is the missing link in that equation. Maybe we pull out the Purdue game, but I'm not so certain on that.
In a nonCOVID year we scrape out bowl eligibility again but have a very similar season to Zooks last where we start 5-0 and then proceed to lose out. Which I still think disappoints the fan base and makes us talk in here about a new coach. I know nothing about the locker room and what Lovie and JW thinks are at the future, but I think Lovie has accomplished what we wanted him to and now it's time to move forward while we can before it gets stale and we regress.
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I don't understand the logic. You're saying that Purdue and Minny were guaranteed wins?
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My fantasy has us at 11-0 and a lock to run the table. Anybody who only has us going 7-4 must be some sort of hater.
My reality says that in 5 years, we've maintained a firm grip on a spot in the bottom quarter of the Big Ten with no non-delusional hope of rising above that level without making a change. I'd like to see us do better. If that makes me a "Lovie hater", oh well.
Fleck wants to blow the doors off us more than any other team in the conference.
Regardless of how this season ends, the program as a whole isn't where we should want it to be. Lovie's had this time. He will go down as having one of the worst records of Illini HC's all time. This team is still the gold (brown?) standard of the conference, both in terms of on field production and recruiting success. He has failed, full stop.
Of course, I think he brought a lot of integrity back to the program after the Beckman/Cubit issues. Name recognition too, obviously, but that only gets you so far (also obvious). I do believe this program is better than where he found it, but not much. I also fully believe that if money was no object, he'd be gone before the end of this calendar year.
Of course, I think he brought a lot of integrity back to the program after the Beckman/Cubit issues. Name recognition too, obviously, but that only gets you so far (also obvious). I do believe this program is better than where he found it, but not much. I also fully believe that if money was no object, he'd be gone before the end of this calendar year.
Miles Smith, is that you??
I assumed Luke ;p
Don’t quote me but I got the impression that there wasn’t much love lost between Luke and Lovie. I doubt he’d be on here carrying Lovie’s jock.
Our record is 2-4. You can come up with any number of hypothetical situations why our record isn't better. For example, I could say that if we had recruited every 5 star player in the country, we would be undefeated and looking at 6 national championships in a row. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds at some point? You sound like Tim Beckman "Well if we just take away four plays we'd have won." It's all just excuses. The only thing that matters is the results on the field.
Lovie is 17-38, for a .309 winning percentage. It's the third worst winning percentage in the last 100 years, behind Valek (.200) and Moeller (.227). Beckman was (.324), Zook was (.400). Zook got fired after taking us to three bowl games in 7 years, including the Rose Bowl and had us in back-to-back bowl games when he got fired. Lovie is historically bad.
1. IF we were 7-4 going into the NW game, we wouldn’t be firing Lovie, but we would be a bit concerned whether Lovie’s best team (and what he’s been building to for 5 years) could get more than 7 wins. 8 was the minimum goal for the “breakthrough” year. 7 he would have been safe and 6 probably kept his job but we wouldn’t be satisfied.
2. However, in that alternate reality there is no guarantee we beat Purdue and Minny. Peters has been pulled from Wisky and Iowa this season in an effort to find a spark so even having him in those games doesn’t mean he would have been consistently “on”. Purdue was gashing us for huge yards with their walk-on QB and Minny absolutely ran over us. I honestly don’t think Peters changes either outcome.
3. If we want to play the what-if game,
I’ll submit that Rutgers would not have been a guaranteed win either. Our run heavy offense was just enough to win, but who knows what happens in a world where we run less and pass more? I’d like to think we still win but you can’t automatically switch Purdue and Minny to wins without considering the idea that Rutgers and Nebraska may have been losses.
4. Tone down the “Lovie Haters” comments. Considering how the games have gone so far, we’d probably be 6-5 and looking at 6-6 in Lovie’s BEST year. (And possibly not even that good) Still getting blasted by Iowa and Minny at home while staying at the bottom of the B1G West cannot, in any way, be considered a successful rebuild. Even historical rebuilds that have eventually failed (Colorado recently, Zook and Turner here, Babers at Syracuse) had at least one very successful season. So if this were a non-COVID year, we’d be peaking at 6-ish wins and would still have not beaten NW in his tenure (I’m predicting a loss this week).
5. Most people desperately WANTED Lovie to succeed because they wanted Illinois to be good. Nobody I’ve seen had a personal vendetta against him and wanted to see him fail. But the inconsistent play, poor recruiting, and porous defense (which Lovie OWNS) has lost the fan base. And a 2-7 COVID or 5-7 normal season aren’t going to solve that. (Obviously I’m predicting us to lose the last 2 games)
I was joking because of his handle...
Just curious - why? Because he's from Illinois? Or did want the Illini job at some point and we went a different direction?
I will just say we made the wrong decision in 2016.....
No way this is a real post. Russian bot? Parody account? The ghost of Lovie's naïve, yet unwaveringly supportive grandma who told him "the world is your oyster" growing up?
So he wanted this job? Doesn't do any good now but certainly wonder where Illinois would be if they just hired the Illinois native who had gone on to big things at Western Michigan. Would we have had an 11-2 season? Would we be recruiting Illinois like Minnesota is recruiting Illinois - or even better?
There was major dialogue between him and JW. Who knows, I am not a Fleck fan but I have to think it would be better than the current climate.
If I remember correctly, Fleck was angling for the job hard behind the scenes. There were concerns about his schtick translating to the B1G, the pressure from administration to hire a minority coach, and also JW's familiarity with Lovie for his first hire.
We should have won the PU game. We were in the Red Zone six Times and only scored twice. We lost a minimum of twelve points and that was enough to win. We should be 3-3 with they Nerds coming up but winning will make things harder for JW to pull the trigger. We really need to pull the trigger on Lovie and get a guy who can build a program.
This Illinois job wasn't available when Fleck was. Fleck was hired by Minnesota in January '17, and Lovie was hired in March '16
Fleck completed his 3rd year at WMU in 2015, and was in the midst of a nice turnaround, but really wasn't a serious candidate for B1G jobs in December '15, like he was just one year later. When Beckman was canned in late August, Fleck's name did come up, but he quickly dismissed it.
Fleck completed his 3rd year at WMU in 2015, and was in the midst of a nice turnaround, but really wasn't a serious candidate for B1G jobs in December '15, like he was just one year later. When Beckman was canned in late August, Fleck's name did come up, but he quickly dismissed it.
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