Bye bye Lovie
- Thread starter CaryPSU
- Start date
Was the wrong hire to begin with. A lot of hope that he would recruit very well and implement really strong defenses. Poor assumptions based on his Chicago Bears defenses.......and he had zero energy/interest in recruiting. It showed. A bunch of 2/3* recruits and a bunch of transfers -- some who panned out, most didn't.
They should go with Lance Leipold.
They should go with Lance Leipold.
Lovie? Wasn't that Thurston Howell's wifes name!
Illinois made a big mistake getting rid of Zook. Big 10 Title, Rose Bowl, good recruiting from Florida. What more could they want?
Zook was 34-51 (18-38 in conference) at Illinois, never won a Big Ten title, and got clocked in the Illini's only Rose Bowl appearance during his tenure.
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His recruiting started off hot. His first three real classes were #27, #22, and #22 nationally. Including several 5* kids or very high 4* kids. Immediately leveraged that into his 9-3 season in 2007 which included a win over #1 Ohio State in Columbus. Earned a trip to the Rose Bowl because OSU played in the BCS title game against LSU.
Mysteriously, it all dropped off after that. The 2008 season was a losing season, and recruiting began to tail off. His last three classes were #61, #37, and #63 nationally. Had a few 6-6 seasons, but that was about it. He started the 2011 season off 6-0, and then lost out which ultimately got him fired.
In retrospect, going 6-6 with mediocre recruiting was better than what followed him.
In 2007, the Illini were tied for second in the conference with Michigan, which won the head-to-head. Illinois got the berth, Michigan having made the more recent trip, and then shit the bed.
No, but losing by 32 points, giving up a then-record 49 points, and a still-record 633 yards could be viewed as negative. So could a 40% overall and 32% in-conference winning record.
An article in the Atlantic said that Smith didn't have a single 2020 in-state recruit. Illinois' inability to recruit Chicago continues to be bewildering.
The article also mentions Kent State’s Sean Lewis as a Chicago-area native that Illinois should take a look at, which will make at least one poster here unhappy.
The article also mentions Kent State’s Sean Lewis as a Chicago-area native that Illinois should take a look at, which will make at least one poster here unhappy.
In Lovie's case, he just wasn't interested in recruiting.
He relied on transfer washouts from bigger programs (like Brandon Peters), and 2*/3* kids from Florida that no other P5 school wanted.
Makes sense considering very little time/effort is required to pull in those kinds of recruits. Illinois always had PT to offer, and transfers were looking for a second chance. And the 2* FL kids finally had a P5 offer they could accept.
I'm hardly an insider, but there were rumblings that Lovie literally did not recruit at all. He would of course meet kids when they were on campus, but very little beyond that. No idea if true, but his results would seemingly support that.
Their AD should have fired him a year or so ago.
With Illinois being the protected crossover game for Penn State starting in 2022 I'm hoping they fully whiff on the hire to replace Lovie.
We weren't talking about PSU.
Every school has its own aspirations for its football program. Gonna guess that at Illinois it's better than winning only 40% of its games. Thus, exit Zook. Don't believe they expected their successors to do worse, but that's the nature of the beast. Never know whether lurking inside the frog is Prince Charming until you kiss it. Zook was never going to be anything but a frog.
