Lovie Smith out at Illinois

#51      

TMC999

TMC999
Not Iowa
TMC999
BZuppke said:
The AD is key. Every program that turned things around started with a great AD.
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In retrospect it’s amazing how impactful a bad hire in the AD set us back. That was the genesis of so much garbage. A good AD fixed hoops with Underwood. Well done. But beckman really left a mess that we’re still not out of.
 
#53      

BexleyIllini

B
BexleyIllini
TMC999 said:
This renewed my confidence in JW. It was obvious a change was needed but hard to do. That’s a leader.
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I agree. Historically, Illinois always keeps coaches 1-2 years too long. I really do think Lovie is a man of integrity, but the program just doesn’t pass the eye-test anyway you slice it. I hope the new coach comes quickly and is able to retain the talent we do have.
 
#54      

DocMorgan

DocMorgan
DocMorgan
Can we fire Miles also so we don’t have to see him anymore, or does he get to run the defense next week?
 
#55      

illini80

illini80
Forgottonia
illini80
Surprised. Not disappointed. I really really really hope we finally get this right.
 
#56      

BashCt

B
BashCt
SuperMetroid said:
It's really depressing that after 5 years of Lovie we're basically right back where we were at the start of the Beckman era (with nearly identical results to show for it). We have better facilities and the scandal/doofus stain is off the program, but the endless Wheel of Mediocrity that is Illinois football keeps rollin' on.

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Add 3 to the win column this year from the non-con if you're really going to use this year as a bench mark (which you shouldn't anyway)
 
#57      

BRucks

BRucks
BRucks
ktal said:
I have a lot of confidence in Josh. I think he deservedly had every reason to expect Lovie could be successful here. I appreciate that he judged based on results, and I'm hopeful that he has done whatever due diligence required to ensure this next hire is truly able to perform.

My bet is we know the new coach before our next game. And probably by dinner on Tuesday.
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I wish that I shared your confidence in Whitman's due diligence. History would indicated that he showed none of that with his first football hire. His first day on campus was March 5, 2016. He fired Bill Cubit that same day. He flew Lovie Smith in and introduced him as the new football coach at a news conference on the University of Illinois campus two days later, March 7, 2016. There was no search committee. The position was never advertised. He had never hired a football coach prior to that time. Larry Kindbom was coach at Washington U. for Josh's full tenure there as was Joel Dettwiler during his full tenure at UW-LaCrosse. Perhaps things will be different this time.
 
#58      

BWBW

BWBW
BWBW
Oh my gosh, Ruckus, are you suggesting JW will hire either Kindbom or Detwiler?
 
#64      

Deleted member 747277

D
Guest
Deleted member 747277
SuperMetroid said:
But that's kinda my point - regardless of the reason, we probably ARE looking at another 3 year rebuild. It's not really a dig on Lovie. It's just the nature of this program since pretty much 1980 when Mike White came on board.

The cycle roughly goes:
1. New coach is hired to clean up the previous coach's mess
2. We endure 1-3 years of mediocre to absolutely terrible football rebuilding
3. The new coach has some measure of "success". In a good year, it's 10 wins or a Rose Bowl, usually it's 7 and a Kmart.com Bowl.
4. We immediately begin a slide back down into mediocre to absolutely terrible
5. Coach is fired in the midst of his own mess (scandal, recruiting failures, on-field record)
6. Repeat steps 1-5

There's just never any sustained success that lasts more than a year.
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Genuinely curious about how realistic it is to get out of that cycle. The west is weak, but in order for us to ascend, someone has to fall. And with the way college football is now it’s hard (national recruiting, CFB playoffs, TV money splits, transfer portal etc.). It seems tough to crack in to a top tier with any sort of regularity now.

We always talk about just wanting Iowa or Wisconsin stability, but that just seems like such a tall task. Northwestern (ugh) seems to be the most realistic for us: Boom and Bust seasons that could change from one to the next if we get lucky in the portal. Making it to the big championship just to get demolished by OSU and then the next year Iowa is back up and we sink to middle/bottom of the pack. It just seems like team identities are sort of set at this point (I know this year seems like a counter to that, but it’s because of Covid)
 
#66      

Dan

Dan
Admin
Dan
Whitman: "Did we win enough games? Absolutely not."

But in better position today to have success than when Lovie arrived. Better resources, staffing, facilities.

Whitman said he made the decision after the Iowa game. No turning point, single game. "It was an accumulation of observations and data points that I've gathered over these last couple years."

Whitman: "I had to wrestle with how to evaluate a football program in the middle of a global pandemic."

Specifically mentions Purdue and Minnesota games.

Ultimately had to come to grips with pandemic is inherently unfair but still had to make evaluation.

Whitman: We always imagined this would be an important year. Buyout was structured that way.

Whitman: No half-step or half-measure that could be taken to improve to where they need to. "So it was time to get out."

Lovie Smith buyout is ~$2.3 million, Whitman says.

Whitman: Today was the right day to do it. Competitive marketplace out there. We need to be prepared to position ourselves amongst our peers and move fast. Concerned if they waited a week, they'd get behind in the marketplace.

mentions early signing period as well so recruits would know about change even if they don't know the conclusion

Whitman: Will keep conversation with Lovie Smith to himself, but met with him this morning.

"Needless to say, he is class all the way. ...He is a pro. ...He is disappointed."

Whitman: Incredibly grateful to the players. This is where leadership in the locker room will come through as they prepare for Penn State.

"They know how I care about them. I appreciate the trust they have in me."

Whitman: 35 staff members tied directly to Lovie Smith in that football building. Next coach will have decision-making responsibility on next staff, so many won't come back. But I've asked them to keep working. That's hard. Indebted to them for being professional.

Whitman: "Recruiting was an area of concern."

Whitman: Financially, actually smarter to make this move now than later.

Whitman: Made decision last week but didn't tell Lovie until this morning.

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#71      

SuperMetroid

SuperMetroid
Evanston
SuperMetroid
BashCt said:
Add 3 to the win column this year from the non-con if you're really going to use this year as a bench mark (which you shouldn't anyway)
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It's definitely hard to measure anything accurately this year, but if you add the 3 non-con wins back in you'd also have to add likely losses to OSU and Indiana which would put us at 5-7 and matching Cubit's lame duck season. Maybe we beat Purdue with our full roster to go 6-6? We weren't remotely competitive in any of our other losses.
 
#72      

BashCt

B
BashCt
SuperMetroid said:
It's definitely hard to measure anything accurately this year, but if you add the 3 non-con wins back in you'd also have to add likely losses to OSU and Indiana which would put us at 5-7 and matching Cubit's lame duck season. Maybe we beat Purdue with our full roster to go 6-6? We weren't remotely competitive in any of our other losses.
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6-6 sounds correct for a full healthy year, which would lead to the first back-to-back bowl appearances in a decade. It's still less than everyone obviously wanted, but it's clear progress and stability in a program that needs it
 
#74      

SuperMetroid

SuperMetroid
Evanston
SuperMetroid
3xIllini said:
Genuinely curious about how realistic it is to get out of that cycle. The west is weak, but in order for us to ascend, someone has to fall. And with the way college football is now it’s hard (national recruiting, CFB playoffs, TV money splits, transfer portal etc.). It seems tough to crack in to a top tier with any sort of regularity now.

We always talk about just wanting Iowa or Wisconsin stability, but that just seems like such a tall task. Northwestern (ugh) seems to be the most realistic for us: Boom and Bust seasons that could change from one to the next if we get lucky in the portal. Making it to the big championship just to get demolished by OSU and then the next year Iowa is back up and we sink to middle/bottom of the pack. It just seems like team identities are sort of set at this point (I know this year seems like a counter to that, but it’s because of Covid)
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It's maddening, isn't it? Especially since very other school around us with comparable or worse histories has found "their guy" at some point:

Wisconsin has had 2 losing seasons since Barry Alvarez turned the program around in 1993.
Kirk Ferentz has 2 losing seasons since turning around Iowa in 2001.
Pat Fitzgerald - 3 losing seasons since 2008.
The jury is still out on Tom Allen but Indiana (INDIANA!) is a top 10 team this year.
Purdue had the Joe Tiller years, Minnesota had decent success under Glen Mason and has a potential program-builder in Clappy McRowboat.

Meanwhile we keep going in circles.
 
#75      

bluemountain

B
bluemountain
champaignchris said:
I know some want to do their, “Ding dong the witch is dead,” thing, and I certainly don’t think Smith should have been retained.

However, I think we should appreciate the mess the football program was in when he got here - the player abuse scandal, the bizarre Cubit extension, the unnecessarily protracted AD search, and the fact that he came in less than a week before Spring practice started.

He didn’t have a first recruiting class, he had to pick from the leftovers for his coaching staff two or three months after the normal hiring cycle had already passed, and he didn’t have an opportunity to fully implement his schemes until the Fall.

There is no other coach of Smith’s quality that would have taken the job when he did. Whitman had to either go with Smith or waste another recruiting year treading water with Cubit.

I think Whitman made the right choice, and while I’m disappointed in Smith’s results, it’s also obvious to me that the program is in better than he found it, and because of that, Illinois will be able to attract a better coach than it did during the last hiring cycle. I don’t think the good Coach Smith did for the program showed up in the Win-Loss record, but I believe it will show up with this next coach that’s hired.
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The thing is, we are not better off. Lovie's record is worse, recruiting is worse, we are worse vs our B10 competitors. The only area in which we have improved is our facilities, and that had nothing to do with Lovie.