Lovie Smith has broken a major Illini football streak. He became the first former head coach since John Mackovic in 1991 to move up in the world since leaving Champaign. Five of the six men in between them moved down the vocational ladder, with one making a lateral move. So for now, you can put to rest the idea that Illini football is where coaching careers go to die.
But honestly, Bret Bielema is the first real, legit Big Ten Head Coach that the program has had since Mackovic, and that fact alone should inspire some some substantial optimism. Between Bielema and Mackovic we had: a badly out of place NFL coach, an in way over his head MAC coach, a recruiting specialist, an offensive coordinator and a defensive coordinator.
Last month, we lost Gary Moeller, but every other former Illini football coach after him is still alive. Let’s look at where they are now, and where they went after their time at Illinois was up.
Summarizing his era of Illini Football:
This was basically a bold experiment that failed. Somehow, someway, every Illini football coach since Moeller (excluding the extended interim that was Bill Cubit) made at least one bowl game, including the two disaster hires- Smith and Tim Beckman. The low point was 63-0 to Iowa, on Homecoming 2018, the worst loss in school history. That same team also gave up exactly 63 points on two more occasions, plus a 50 burger to Purdue. So much for that famous Lovie D. right?
What he is/was instead of being a true Big Ten Head Football Coach:
If you ever needed more evidence that he’s a NFL coach, but not a college one, recall the Land of Lincoln hat game 2019.
Illinois had secured a bowl berth, but badly needed to end their rivalry game losing streak to Northwestern in the regular season finale.
Smith, acting like he was running a week 17 NFL team that had already secured playoff positioning, rested his starters, and the Illini got absolutely destroyed by what was Pat Fitzgerald’s worst ever NU team. Yeesh!
Football Jobs After the Illini:
He was hired by the Houston Texans to become their associate head coach and defensive coordinator in March 2021, after being canned by Josh Whitman in December 2020. He was promoted to head coach this past February.
Summarizing his era of Illini Football:
See the plaque above, which is filled with loads of unspoken, unintentional comedy. He had one year, with which he went 5-7, highlighted by his winning the fishiest game in Illini football history. BTN re-ran the 2015 win over Nebraska last year, and watching it again, it seems just as weird and controversial as ever. Pay close attention to what happened with the point spread the morning of that game. Look at the final series, where Illinois ran the exact same play six times until the refs helped them score.
Now look at what Nebraska QB Tommy Armstrong did on his final series, preceding that Illini drive led by Wes Lunt. Not saying it was fixed, I have no idea, but man, everything about the ending and result looks like something not entirely on the up and up.
What he is/was instead of being a true Big Ten Head Football Coach:
Seemed a decent sort and a good guy, at least when compared to Beckman, but that all changed when he promoted Ryan Cubit, his son who…well Google his name and DUI, and see what you find, to a position well above his resume. Ryan Cubit has never been on a staff that wasn’t led by his Dad.
Lovie engaged in nefarious nepotism with his kid too though! Cubit was a decent OC though, with a great mind for the passing game. And that viral video of his personally selling tickets on the quad was endearing.
Football Jobs After the Illini:
After a year out of football, Cubit returned to Martin County High School in Stuart, Florida in 2017, to reprise the head coaching role he held 1986-1988. After one 4–5 season, he stepped down. The next year, Cubit joined the coaching staff of his alma mater, University of Delaware, as an asst. head coach and running backs coach. Again he stepped down after one season.
Current Gig: At 68, he’s retired now. Take a look at his Twitter feed, which posted as recently as February. The bio says it all “Grateful for my beautiful wife, my incredible children, fantastic grandchildren and the opportunity to coach some of the best in the business.” He’s done with football.
Summarizing his era of Illini Football:
Let’s just try to not relive this train wreck of an atrocity too much. Beckman pulled off the rare combo of being bad at what he does and being a bad guy. He wasn’t just terrible at his job, he also broke the rules to even get to that level (so I guess his teams would have been even worse if he played by the rules?). While he was a terrible coach, he was even worse at talking about being an Illini football coach. Take that plaque down! Sheesh!
What he is/was instead of being a true Big Ten Head Football Coach:
a decent MAC level coach, a decade ago, but one incapable of doing an interview without embarrassing himself.
Football Jobs After the Illini:
About a year after he was canned by the University of Illinois, then UNC head coach Larry Fedora hired him to serve as an unpaid assistant defensive coach. (Plot twist: week two that season was a trip to Illinois).
However, after a ton of backlash, Beckman resigned, saying he did not want to be a “distraction.” It was later revealed that UNC chancellor Carol Folt was against letting Beckman into the program. This effectively killed his coaching career, because if you can’t even work for free, under one of your closest connections in the business, well, you’re done.
Current Gig:
On April 11, 2016, Beckman settled with the university for a one time payment of $250,000. He was also the state’s highest paid individual employee while he was at U of I. Maybe he saved and invested wisely? Because football is long done with him, and now he’s currently living a quiet life, outside the public eye. We’ll leave it at that.
Summarizing his era of Illini Football:
Laugh all you want at this guy, but as the plaque above says, he won a National Coach of the Year award in 2007. Also Illinois has the worst power five school revenue sport drought in this regard- it’s been 15 years since they have gone to either a Sweet Sixteen in men’s basketball or won 8+ games in a football season. Wake Forest had this dubious distinction until recently. It was the Zooker, not the hoops program who last brought national relevance to a revenue sport.
Zook also won 7+ games three times, the last being in 2011. No Illini football coach has done that since. Yes, his play-calling was atrocious, and he was kind of strange in a lot of ways, but he got Illini football to a Rose Bowl, just their second since 1963. But once they got the two high-priced coordinators, and relegated his role, he took his foot off the gas, and it was only a matter of time before regime change would come.
What he is/was instead of being a true Big Ten Head Football Coach:
An awesome recruiter, who could bring 5-stars to Illini football in a way no one else could. But he could just never get the math right, in regards to when to go for one, and when to go for two.
Football Jobs After the Illini:
No one has more unique and eye-catching post Illini football gig then Zook, and no he wasn’t a water-skiing instructor. He actually worked as a loan officer in an Ocala, FL bank. Not a big, national, corporate bank, but a small local institution. From there he went back into the game, first as a Special Teams Assistant with the Green Bay Packers. He was soon promoted to ST Coordinator.
He also worked for something called the Seattle Stallions in something referred to as the American Alliance of Football in a similar role.
Then he moved on to working under his former assistant Mike Locksley at Maryland.
Current Gig:
At age 68, he currently serves as the Defensive Coordinator of the Seattle Dragons of the XFL .
Ron Turner
Summarizing his era of Illini Football:
To quote the monkey at the typewriter who so incensed Monty Burns: “it was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times!” Indeed under Turner, Illini football saw the highest highs and lowest lows of the past half-century. His first team, in 1997, went winless which is something that is simply impossible for a power five conference team to do these days. They won’t even have one win seasons (Turner had one of those too, in 2003) nowadays. On the flip side, he led the 2001 team to a 10-1 regular season, and a Big Ten championship.
However, their top 5 national ranking was short lived as they got absolutely hammered in the Sugar Bowl by LSU.
For whatever reason, he could not parlay that success (nor the fact that he literally had a NFL charter franchise playing their home games in his program’s stadium) into any recruiting gains, at all. Weird.
What he is/was instead of being a true Big Ten Head Football Coach: a decent offensive coordinator and the greatest lover of the fullback screen pass that the world has ever seen.
Football Jobs After the Illini: He went right back to his previous gig, OC of the Chicago Bears (where he served from 1993-1996), so this is the lateral move we spoke of. The Bears replaced him in 2009, so Turner then took the same role at Stanford, briefly, before then becoming the WRs coach of the Indianapolis Colts.
He then got another college head coaching gig, Florida International, but it was disastrous. He went just 10-30 over the course of three and a half seasons. After being fired in 2016 from that job, he served as an offensive consultant with the Carolina Panthers in 2017.
by the way, I hope my fellow #Illini are continuing to Fight Hunger via Kraft products, using Zaxby’s to experience the Heart of Dallas, celebrating Liberty through Auto Zone and having Nokia add Sugar to their lives https://t.co/sx3zAJtJvv
— Paul M. Banks (@PaulMBanks) August 16, 2022
Current Age, Gig: 68 (why is every former Illini football coach exactly 68 years old right now?), out of football. Turner came back to school last season, for the 20th anniversary of the Big Ten title team. This was a month after he sold his condo in the River North neighborhood of Chicago for $780,000. So he was living well in the second city. While we did get exclusives with Kurt Kittner, Rocky Harvey and Brandon Lloyd that day, we just missed the chance to catch up with coach. Sorry.
Summarizing his era of Illini Football:
If you liked 9-7, 6-3, 7-0 scores, then this was your guy! Big fan of running the ball 55, 60 times a game? Then Tepperball was the style for you. Illinois was consistently mediocre under him, but hey, at least they weren’t awful…except for his final season in 1996. The 1994 team, led by an unreal defense and some ok pieces on offense, was pretty good, and almost came close to doing some special things.
What he is/was instead of being a true Big Ten Head Football Coach:
A defensive coordinator through and through, Really wasn’t a guy that should be running a power 5 program, but he did so in a clean, honest way. But again his teams had a, uh, uhmm “pragmatic” style of play.
Football Jobs After the Illini:
His next stop after Illinois was LSU, where he served as DC and Linebackers coach- not bad work! From there he then became head coach of Division II Edinboro, whose mascot is the Fighting Scots, which is pretty cool, we got to say. After a pretty solid run in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, he took over another D2 program, where he went 36-18 as the leader of the IUP Crimson Hawks. His last stop in football was the University of Buffalo, where was the, of course D Coordinator, from 2012-2014.
Current Gig:
He officially retired from football in 2015, at the age of 69. But you can buy his book, “Complete Linebacking,” (2013) to which Khalil Mack contributed, on Amazon
John Mackovic
Summarizing his era of Illini Football:
Kept up a lot of White’s success, but did so in a clean fashion. Won a co-Big Ten title in 1990, before leaving for Texas. He did alright in Austin, but fell far short of the very lofty expectations the Longhorns have for themselves, The UT fanbase remains very self-deluded, 30 years late. It was a turning point for Illini football too though- they have only had seven winning seasons (and just one in double digits) since he left. Northwestern, by contrast, has had four double digit wins seasons since 1995.
Football Jobs After the Illini:
Fired by Texas, he then worked for ESPN for a short period, then took over Arizona, where he flopped. He then had a couple more minor coaching roles, here and there before calling it a career.
Current Gig: At age 78, long out of football, and retired for quite some time.
Mike White
Summarizing his era of Illini Football:
Ok, so here is where the fun truly begins! (Yes, way down here!). White was way ahead of his time. With the possible exception of maybe Hayden Frey at Iowa, no coach brought the modern passing game to the Big Ten. White’s teams were a NFL QB factory, and they produced the most fun to watch period that the Illini football program has ever seen.
Unfortunately, the Illini football passing game (other than for three seasons under Kurt Kittner) has never come back anything remotely close to what it was back then.
Although White was crooked, and eventually resigned his post in 1987 due to recruiting violations, he also led the most legendary team in Illini football history- the 10-2 1983 squad.
They will forever be remembered as the only team that beat all other nine Big Ten teams in the same season. The Big Ten has long been more than 10 teams, and it is obviously not going back to that size any time soon. That team also partied with U of I alum Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion on Dec 31, 1983. Right before the Rose Bowl on Jan 2, 1984.
It’s just too bad for Rick Neuheisel and UCLA, their opponents who thrashed them that day, because they were not invited to the big soiree; despite being just up the road.
Football Jobs After the Illini:
He got an assistant job with the Raiders in the late 80s, and became the head coach by the mid 90s. It was on his watch, in the 1995 season, the team’s first in Oakland after a 12-year sojourn in Los Angeles that saw the 8–2 Raiders nosedive, losing their final six to finish 8–8 and out of the playoffs.
Following a 7-9 record in 1996, White was fired by the Raiders on Christmas Eve, being given the news by Bruce Allen though Al Davis was involved in the decision. How Dickensian! I guess Al Davis was Ebeneezer Scrooge. White was on then on the staff of the Rams from 1997-1999, including a Super Bowl victory in ’99. He later served as the Director of Football Administration for the Kansas City Chiefs.
Current Gig: Retired, and now 86 years young.
Paul M. Banks is the owner/manager of The Sports Bank and author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” as well as “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune, and he co-hosts the After Extra Time podcast, part of Edge of the Crowd Network. Follow him and the website on Twitter and Instagram.