The good news regarding Illini football? The program is no longer led by a man who often came off like a college football version of Lloyd Christmas, Matt Foley, Phil Davison, Tommy Boy or the villain from “Jurassic World.” (Here’s our list of Beckman’s ten funniest verbal gaffes).
In Interim Coach Bill Cubit, you have someone who may not be a big, splashy name, but he’s competent, composed and professional.
The bad news for Illini football?
Athletic Director Mike Thomas is still employed. Thomas needs to be dismissed yesterday. Thomas cannot make the next football head coaching hire. Thomas, as Illini A.D., has performed like a landlord living in your building, who has let it completely go up in flames yet denies the even the presence of smoke, let alone fire..Beckman released a statement Friday night that implies he could sue the University in order to acquire the severance package that he believes that he is due.
In other words, Thomas and Beckman truly deserve each other; because both take/took incompetence to frighteningly new depths.
Well, it could be worse. Illinois could have hired one of the seven guys on this list; a collection of frighteningly bad coordinators, who all served at Illinois at some point this past decade. Many of them might be as bad as Beckman, if not worse. So where does Illini football go from here? Who would want to come to Champaign-Urbana, roll up their sleeves, and try to fix this hot mess?
Well, here’s an early list of four candidates we made.
Mike Thomas has a horrible reputation nationally. Top tiered coaches do not want to work for him. As you saw last Friday, Thomas did every message control cliche trick in the book (calling local reporters by their first names, doing the late Friday news dump for negative PR despite his admitting that he knew about the investigation results earlier in the week, having a press conference on very short notice, intentionally shutting out the Chicago media).
In the words of Dr. Dre, “I’m expressing with my full capabilities” that Thomas needs to be jettisoned ASAP. Because a lot of people in the Champaign bubble just don’t see it. Don’t get me wrong there is some great reporting between done in C-U, especially at the Daily Illini.
However, Thomas (and Illini basketball Coach John Groce too, he performs the exact same media manipulation Jedi mind tricks that Thomas does) knows he can control the local media to some extent. Illini basketball and Illini football is the only game in town when it comes to central Illinois, so Thomas and Groce know they can get away with certain things downstate.
Those mind tricks don’t work on Chicago media, and the national media. And to get a good idea of who might be coming to coach the team next at Memorial Stadium, you need to get the national perspective.
We also asked two of CBS’ lead national college football announcers what kind of coach could Illini football get.
Gary Danielson, Rick Neuheisel and Verne Lundquist were on media conference call today, and Danielson joked with Neuhesiel, “has your agent called you yet?”
Neuheisel, who is 81-59 in his career as a head coach, but flamed out at UCLA in 2011, said this about the Illini football coaching search, after Bill Cubit.
“The supply line is really long. Supply and demand in this industry is way out of whack. There’s a long, long list.”
Neuheisel then mentioned all the of the Big Ten’s positive attributes currently and brought up the fact that it’s a Big Ten job.
“This thing (the Big Ten) is continuing to blossom so I think the Illinois job is a cherry,” he said.
“I don’t know if there are dead end jobs,” said Danielson.
“Barry Alvarez took a supposedly dead end job that Lou Holtz told him not to take, and he turned Wisconsin into a national, elite brand and a contender for the national championship. Bill Snyder went to Kansas State and made it a job in which you could win the national championship.”
“Virginia Tech. Stanford. Baylor. I think right now there’s a guy out there, if he had the right energy, and the right outlook, beat the bushes found the right system he could build Illinois into a contender just like any other spot,” Danielson concluded.
Naturally, I followed that up by asking who might that guy be, but no one has that answer.
Although many talking heads out there keep describing current Western Michigan Coach P.J. Fleck as that guy. Fleck is often described in the same manner as what Danielson described. Even weirder, he succeeded Cubit at WMU.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is part of the FOX Sports Engage Network. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He also appears regularly on numerous talk radio stations all across the country. Catch him Tuesdays on KOZN 1620 the Zone.
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