Year one of the Lovie Smith era of Illini football was a disaster.
Year two will go a long toward determining whether or not Smith will stick around for a year three, four and beyond.
As William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
It’s not that Illini football was THAT awful this year. In quite a few areas (wide receiver play, run defense, pass blocking come to mind first and foremost), yes, yes they were atrocious for much of the 2016 season. Penalties were a major issue from the beginning, persisted for most of the season and reared their ugly head again as Illinois got trounced by Northwestern 42-21 in the season finale.
While you certainly can’t blame Lovie Smith for many of the issues this team had, you definitely must hold him accountable for the lack of discipline they displayed this season. There is no excuse for a team, especially one with so many veterans, to consistently be committing penalties in bulk; very often and the most inopportune times.
Overall, you could easily argue that this Illini football team was the 12th best team in a 14 team B1G. They were better than Rutgers and Michigan State, but not as good as Purdue, or anyone else above the Boilermakers in the pecking order. Finishing 12th is bad, but you’ve seen worse as an Illini football fan. Think about Ron Turner’s first season and final seasons at the helm. Think about the Tim Beckman regime overall as whole, how embarrassing it was both and off the field, and all of the damage that the Beckman era did for the Illini football brand.
In other words, we’ve seen and endured worse. Year one of Lovie Smith went poorly, but it still did not go as badly as year one of Tim Beckman, or year one of Ron Turner.
“We did a lot of things that teams that lose do,” Smith said at Northwestern after the game.
“It’s a process. You build a foundation and you start working from there.”
Perhaps the reason 2016 seems so bad now is because hopes were so high. The Smith hire in March rejuvenated the program and re-energized the base. Spring Illini football hadn’t been this exciting for a very long time. Summer media days, training camp, the very early pre-conference schedule, were all much more relevant for this program than it has been for a very long time.
That excitement and interest fizzled fast, and apathy ran high by midseason. The base was extremely apathetic as the season ended with Illinois surrendering 278 rushing yards in Evanston.
Now emotion is much more important than ever before, and you have to wonder how engaged the Illini football base will be next season, and the next season after that, and so forth, as Smith’s rebuilding project will require much more time and a bigger effort than most of us anticipated.
MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY, how long will Lovie Smith stay engaged and committed to this? You’ve heard about the sourced ESPN reports claiming that he’s miserable down in Champaign, and will be looking to bolt sooner rather than later.
Smith publicly disputed that report, and said he’s all in, and truly up for the monumental task that is this massive rebuilding project. Thus, year two will be extremely critical. Things really need to go well next season, or at the very least, much better than how this season turned out.
Illinois went 3-9 this season, if they improve to 4-8 or 5-7 next year it would be significant, but only if Lovie Smith sees any potential future improvement as bigger than it actually is on paper.
The point is- it’s all about how Lovie thinks and feels about the result of next season.
Maybe a year of recruiting his own guys built to run his own systems will rejuvenate him. Maybe he’ll look at the school’s huge commitment to augmenting infrastructure, to upgrading the facilities massively and see that as great potential signposts for the future.
Then Smith will want to see out the remainder of his contract, and potentially re-up for longer. His team continued to show desire, and that reflects very well on Smith. Effort and desire haven’t been a problem for the players, and that’s a good reflection on Lovie’s interest level in seeing this project through.
Or maybe the team will fall far below expectations again in year two, and then Smith won’t be interested in a year three. It’s not so much inherently good or bad that matters, but how Smith truly thinks it so. He’ll be given a long rope and plenty of time to get this thing turned around- it’s a just a matter of how much desire he has to utilize that time and space.
I still believe that Lovie Smith is the right man for this job, let’s hope he still feels the same come this time next year.
Either way, it’s a huge crossroads season for both him and the Illini football program.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.