Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Lovie is 15-36 now. Would this be tolerated at any other school?
I'd argue yes? At least any other school that was in our position when Lovie was hired. Lovie Smith was a HUGE name that boosted the program's reputation, and he had coached in a frickin' Super Bowl (not to mention, we were all hoping he'd have a little more recruiting sway instate) ... and he went to a program with these results in the past four years:
2015: 5-7 (2-6)
2014: 6-7 (3-5)
2013: 4-8 (1-7)
2012: 2-10 (0-8)
Prior to 2012, the new millennium had brought us a record of 59-85 (26-61) ... that's years and years of sucking, laid on top of our embarrassing handling of keeping Cubit on and Beckman's scandal. It was only reasonable to give Lovie at least that amount of time to turn it around (i.e., 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019).
With that said, tolerance for this kind of football really did hinge on the second half of 2019 being some type of meaningful turnaround. The result at Wisconsin convinced me it wasn't, unfortunately.