Looking back, it's hilarious to see that getting Lovie would help us recruit Chicago (per cbs article). I know I thought this would happen and I was ecstatic to have Lovie. Whoops.
Scott Frost Fired
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I was really happy at the time of the Lovie hire - great name recognition, good defensive coach, etc. As it turns out, he was a complete disaster. We would have been much better off keeping Cubit for another year and giving Whitman time to get set in his job and evaluate other coaches. We were no better off at the end of the Lovie regime than at the beginning, when we should have been improving against a weak Big 10 West
As soon as he found out that recruiting was actually hard work, he hired another relative and went back to sleep on the couch.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
No question about it.
The way the surprise and aggressiveness of that hire positioned Whitman as a figure within the fanbase has ended up being the most important legacy. We didn't think a guy like him was possible in a way that it's easy to forget.
Saw a somewhat interesting factoid today. There were 19 new head coaching hired for the 2018 season. Currently only 6 HCs are still with the teams that hired them — Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith, Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher, UCLA’s Chip Kelly, Rice’s Mike Bloomgren, Kent State’s Sean Lewis and UTEP’s Dana Dimel. Four coaches moved on to new jobs — Mario Cristobal (Oregon to Miami), Josh Heupel (Central Florida to Tennessee), Sonny Dykes (SMU to TCU) and Billy Napier (Louisiana to Florida). And 9 were fired. Frost and Herm Edwards joined Florida’s Dan Mullen, Florida State’s Willie Taggart, Mississippi State’s Joe Moorhead, Arkansas’ Chad Morris, Arizona’s Kevin Sumlin, Tennessee’s Jeremy Pruitt and South Alabama’s Steve Campbell on the list of coaches who have been fired. Tagged and Morehead have found new HC gigs.
This head coaching thing is a tough job, but you do get pretty well paid.
This head coaching thing is a tough job, but you do get pretty well paid.
Ransom Stoddard
Ordained Dudeist Priest
- Bloomington, IL
4 of the 9 fired were from the SEC. Unreal.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
The SEC is a coach firing machine on a fundamental, inherent level. There just aren't enough wins to go around to keep all of those fanbases satisfied for any length of time. And then a Kentucky starts stealing some of them and the heat gets turned up even more.
the national
- the Front Range
The Galloping Ghost
- Washington, DC
Seriously. Especially when the whole sentence was, "Obviously, it's not ideal, but for now, I don't think it'll put a dagger in the heart of the program." That is just about the bleakest thing an athletic director, especially an interim one, could say about a collegiate program.
This is soooo accurate.
At the time, I was just extremely grateful we had an AD willing to think outside the MAC for our coach and could get a deal done without the process being a circus. Luckily for us, both those things remain true.
That whole statement still leaves me with a blank stare and open mouth gape as I read it again. Of course “not ideal” will live forever in the Illini Nation memory. But what’s worse, he didn’t even say “this won’t put a dagger…” as if avoiding heart daggers was a common measure of program health. But you’ll notice that he didn’t actually guarantee that. No, no, no. He said he didn’t think it would put a dagger in the heart of the program. No promises, lol. “Hey, this might not kill us forever, hopefully, the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.” That time period was my low point as a fan. Borderline apathy.
Couldn't agree more. The Lovie hire was A HOMERUN. Not a single up and coming coach was coming to the dumpster fire that was Illinois. Not one.
The hire meant were no longer !!!!ing losers with a Timmy Beckboy the JOKE as a coach. Or Cubnut, the coach not a single school would hire. It put us on the map! We were so far off the map we didn't even know where the map was.
It made us a place. It helped sell us to donors. It helped build the Smith Center. We needed some form of legitimacy. Something. Anything! And Lovie Smith brought it.
Anyone who says the hire was a disaster simply wasn't paying attention to how bad it was before he came. He put us back on a path to success (and no, he clearly wasn't the coach to get us to sustained success). But today, we have POTENTIAL. Because of that hire, and then Whitman hiring Coach B.
It’s crazy to me that jimbo and chip have been at their spots for 4 years already. I still feel like they’re both in year 2 in my mind. I’m around enough aTm stuff to know better too.
I feel like a lot of coaches know they get hired to get fired. The competitor in them pushes them to do their best, but like you said, there just aren’t enough wins to go around. Coaches put on the public persona for the press, but behind closed doors they are some of the most blatantly realistic mfs out there.
It was a disaster. We had the money to spend, so we would have attracted a decent coach. The Big 10 West was very weak during Lovie's tenure and even a mediocre coach would have moved us up the ranks. We wasted 5 years in which we should have greatly improved our position. He greatly damaged our standing with in state HS programs and crushed attendance. With our without Lovie, the Smith Center gets built. We got about 15 minutes of national attention from the hire, but outside of that there are no positives to his tenure.
BZuppke
- Plainfield
I was not enthralled. I worried about his long absence from college football and ability to recruit.
I think it's even worse than you're saying, because of the qualifier 'for now'. If he said exactly this: "Obviously, it's not ideal, but for now, I don't think it'll put a dagger in the heart of the program.", he's saying it is a dagger to the heart if it doesn't get corrected soon, but for now the wound shouldn't be fatal. It appears he was right.
I think it was only due to the extremity of the situation that allowed a bunch of other interim appointments to hire the one guy interviewed for AD who pitched a radical solution: kill the deal, eat the cost, hire a pro, move ahead. Josh had the strongest start to a job that I've ever seen. If Lovie had done his part, the plan would have worked. Josh might be the single most important person to the future public image of the university. And he's here from institutional desperation, not wisdom and insight. I'm glad he's here, so I'll take it!
A chance encounter with Lovie told me everything about his attitude about being our football coach . He was haughty and barely disengaged. Seemingly uninterested in my telling him of my passion for Illini football. I continue to be a dedicated supporter of Illini football and always will but as the coach, he lost me then and there. Good riddance.
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