National Signing Day is never boring at the University of Illinois. Certainly not in the Tim Beckman era. Today, he hauled in his best class ever during his time in Champaign as the class of 2015, or “FIGHTING FORCE 15” as Tim Beckman referred to it, ended up with the following rankings:
Scout: #36, #6 in the B1G (just one spot behind the Badgers)
Rivals: #46, #7 in Big Ten (just two slots behind Wisconsin!)
24/7: #45, #6 in the league.
So across the board it was a great haul for Tim Beckman. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen Illini football in the top half of the Big Ten rankings, and this is the first time this has happened under Beckman’s watch.
So that was the good news.
Now we have to cover the bad; and yes it involves yet another Tim Beckman public speaking gaffe. On last year’s signing day, Beckman, with a class ranked much lower across the board than Pat Fitzgerald’s collection at Northwestern, still felt the need to fire an overt and unprovoked shot across the Ryan Field bow. It was just one of the many public speaking snafus that Beckman committed last season.
This year, a main talking point of the presser was an overt directive at the media who cover him. Beckman challenged the media who cover him to help build up the program by writing positive stories.
“I’m going to put this on you guys, we all live in this state, we all want to build the best football team we can,” Beckman said.
“Let’s build this thing into a championship. “
“Not everybody is gonna see the same thing, but the more positive things you can continue to broadcast about this great institution and our athletic programs, the better off we all are.”
Of course, this idea violates all standards and practices of ethical journalism, but that is another post for another time. The Sports Information Department works for the school. They are paid to hype up and promote the program; not the reporters who cover the team for independent outlets.
It is an absurd request made by Tim Beckman, this idea that journalists should be Illini cheerleaders.
There was nothing subtle about this request either. When pressed on the topic Beckman didn’t back off either.
“On social media what are you saying?”
“What are they (Illini players, recruits) reading? Social media is big nowadays, what are you saying?”
When pressed, Beckman said this concept applies to
“everybody, because I think if they want to build champions then we’re all in this together.”
Those quotes speak for themselves. For more commentary on this idea that journalists who cover the Illini should now act as de facto extensions of the SID (or pretty much what the Columbus media does everyday in their Ohio State “coverage.”) have at it in the comments section.
On a side note, Tim Beckman also today brought up the fact that you can get a direct flight from Champaign-Urbana to Dallas for some reason. Just like he did a couple times at the presser previewing the bowl game.
So hey, there’s some great free publicity for Willard Airport there!
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive Inc.
You can read Banks’ feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)