The Illinois AD Search
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I do not see how people can be on board for hiring Chun. Hiring a guy based on their personality is ridiculous. If you wanted to hire guys based on their personalities you might as well hire Dee. What should matter more is experience and what that person has done. Nothing Chun has done gives me any indication he will turn around our mess of a program. How can we go from having an AD that hired Brian Kelly and Mick Cronin to a guy whose revenue sport hire has done nothing and we are content about it. The same goes to Whitman who hasn't hired a D1 coach. I could only be content with Whitman if he has an experienced associate athletic director as Whitman seems to be very smart but also very inexperienced. Illinois isn't in a place in which we can experience growing pains from an inexperienced guy.
The most important thing we need from an AD is not personality or fundraising, it is the ability to identify and bring in talented coaches for our revenue sports. The money and support will follow as long as we start winning again. Some may think fundraising will bring in big coaches and while that may be true, I do not see any big time donors ponying up money until we start winning and that will not happen with our current trend. -Just My Opinion
The most important thing we need from an AD is not personality or fundraising, it is the ability to identify and bring in talented coaches for our revenue sports. The money and support will follow as long as we start winning again. Some may think fundraising will bring in big coaches and while that may be true, I do not see any big time donors ponying up money until we start winning and that will not happen with our current trend. -Just My Opinion
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dsboyce
- Golden, IL
Apparently, they are two people who have yet to be mentioned...my total and complete guesses are Todd Stewart of WKU and Bill McGillis of Southern Miss.
icengineer
- Southern Illinois
Link something. Like This...
Just click on the blue link a few times and it will take you to the instructions on how to color code text. Red is especially hard.
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Deleted member 29907
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Lloyd and Harry...
Jkat00
- Champaign, IL
She's not
Across the street under the headstone "Zuppke"
youTube has some vids on Whitman. Very articulate and on top of his stuff. Impressed as a person. Could do very well here.
Just going on record to say that if we hire Chun he will be a total failure.
His experience at tOSU is completely irrelevant for the job at Illinois. Completely irrelevant. If he had shown he could turn around FAU there might be something there, but FAU stinks in football and basketball. Chun is about half as qualified as Thomas was.
Of course Groce would like him. He needs all the help he can get to save his job.
Having said all that, I'm extremely skeptical that Chun will get the job.
His experience at tOSU is completely irrelevant for the job at Illinois. Completely irrelevant. If he had shown he could turn around FAU there might be something there, but FAU stinks in football and basketball. Chun is about half as qualified as Thomas was.
Of course Groce would like him. He needs all the help he can get to save his job.
Having said all that, I'm extremely skeptical that Chun will get the job.
I moved out to Denver in 1998 and have been here ever since. I try and follow some Buffs football and basketball from time to time - it's a fun place to see a football game for sure.
Seriously, is Tupper just throwing !!!! against the wall, hoping something will stick so that he can send out new cryptic columns and tweets?
#dechr
skamin7
- Wellington, FL
Patrick Chun has an ace in the hole at FAU. Howard Schnellenberger is still considered very highly in these parts and most of the big money the school has raised is thanks to him. Patrick is sort of along for the ride. I achieved my masters degree from FAU 12 years ago and the place had doubled or tripled in size since that time. They have new athletic facilities all over the place now but they were all in place before Patrick arrived. He has done a decent job, don't get me wrong, but people around here are not exactly energized by him. Howard on the other hand will pack a room at a moment's notice and bring the Boca Raton money people with him. Their games (basketball and football) are lucky to draw 1/4th of capacity and no one really talks about them unless they play someone of relevance on campus (which usually will mean those fans will attend and not additional FAU fans). He is not the right choice for this job at this time. He will only fill an office and not be the guy we need.
Tupper talks about how in 2011 President Hogan didn't follow the search committee's recommendations. Anyone remember who their top choice(s) were?
Anyone remember who the committee's top choice(s) were in 2011?
Anyone remember who the committee's top choice(s) were in 2011?
South Farms
- near Ogden & Rt 83
Mike Bobinski, then AD at Xavier and now at GaTech, was the search committee's pick .
Hogan did an end around and picked MT
IlliniOX08
- Bucktown, Chicago
Alright well I've gone from being disappointed that it's not George or Tiley, to now anticipating being disappointed that it won't be Whitman. And I wouldn't have even agreed with a Whitman hire up until about 3 days ago.
This is a freaking disaster. The last time around we obviously had our pick of qualified candidates and ended up with Mike Thomas who made 1, possibly 2, devastating coaching hires all while multiple physical/mental abuse scandals occurred.
Now we are trolling around for boom/bust or fringe candidates and may or may not get them either. Please, for the love of God, just hire Josh Whitman at this point and let's see if he's got the potential that everyone else bandies about.
This is a freaking disaster. The last time around we obviously had our pick of qualified candidates and ended up with Mike Thomas who made 1, possibly 2, devastating coaching hires all while multiple physical/mental abuse scandals occurred.
Now we are trolling around for boom/bust or fringe candidates and may or may not get them either. Please, for the love of God, just hire Josh Whitman at this point and let's see if he's got the potential that everyone else bandies about.
Deleted member 3875
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Just select Whitman and put an end to this slow motion train wreck.
It does feel that way...slow motion train wreck. I am ready for it to be over and for us to figure out what we have and where we are going.
It's rough. Almost like admitting to watching a soap opera.
It's not rough. We have an intern AD at the moment. No rush. People are making it out to be a whole lot worse than it is. Let the process take care of all loose ends and make the right hire. It sounds like we tried every single way to get George and/or Tiley. The search committee has been tight lipped and doing the exact thing that would be expected. It is now and always has been about a common goal and a whole process to get there.
Freudlian slip? We don't really have an interim AD. Maybe by name only.
Interesting...Bobinski's only experience with football was at Akron where Thomas followed him as AD. Thomas fired Bobinski's coach and Akron won their first ever MAC title. Looks like the jury is still out on Bobinski at Ga Tech.
Huge, huge assumption.
Typically, when you throw the whole kaboodle at someone, that's a quick process. They know the best offer is on the table and the answer is either yes or no. This seems to have been the case with Northwestern's Jim Phillips, who shut the door on us right away. Both sides immediately realized it just wasn't happening. That was in November.
Meanwhile, most indications are that the pushes for George and Tiley were informal, backdoor operations involving donor money, which the search committee was not directly involved in. Presumably, George and Tiley had some interest and their terms weren't completely outrageous, and they must have been getting feedback from somebody that we might meet their demands, otherwise the whole thing would not have dragged out for more than three months. Why would either side stay in prolonged talks if they knew there was zero chance of going anywhere? Answer: They wouldn't.
So the question of why the negotiations ultimately fell through after months of effort is an open one. But it seems unlikely that we did everything possible to get them. More likely our go-betweens were pitching more generous terms than our formal decision makers were willing to sign off on when push came to shove. Could have been money, could have been years, could have been authority, could have been changes in DIA policy, or a combination of any/all of those factors ... we might never know. But the take-away is that, in the end, we whiffed on our home-run candidates because either we weren't willing to pay the asking price or we weren't able to talk them down to ours.
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