These are the kinds of things that happen when a season is lost.
Or when you inexplicably lose at home, as ten point favorites, to Purdue, the laughing stock of the Big Ten. Or both at the same time. Tensions mount and fingers get pointed. We’re about halfway through the debut season of Lovie Smith, and thus far, it’s been a bit disastrous.
Your 2016 Illinois football team is the most penalized squad in the Big Ten, racking up 46 infractions for 375 yards through five games. They yielded an entire football field and a quarter to the Boilermakers on Saturday, which largely contributed their upset loss. Illinois out-gained Purdue this past week, so a better disciplined side probably equals a victory.
Flash back to week two against North Carolina, when Illinois gave a very good Tar Heels team a decent fight before a packed house, and also undid themselves with a ton of penalties. If the Illini didn’t have so many self-inflicted wounds, they certainly have a puncher’s chance of winning that contest.
With this backdrop, a reporter asked Lovie Smith yesterday Monday if he needs to be less lax with the team, in order to make them more disciplined.
Smith got very defensive about that line of questioning.
“Ask me that one more time,” he said. “Are you freaking kidding me? Ask me one more time. You think I’ve been too lax? Freaking going out there every day and letting them do whatever they want to do? Absolutely not.”
“I’m not going to give that question an answer. Lax with the football team?
“Are you freaking lax with your job? I’m not either.”
You can watch the exchange in the YouTube video linked here at the 7 minute mark. Lovie Smith doesn’t YELL or RAISE HIS VOICE, as he maintains his famously laid back demeanor, but you can tell he’s pretty angry. That’s understandable, given that it’s the type of question that I would probably get really defensive about too if I were in his position, and that query posed to me.
Just because Smith has a public demeanor/speaking style as mellow as Cleveland Brown on “Family Guy” doesn’t equivocate to his being soft with his players. That’s a rather unfair and faulty assumption, but these things naturally happen when a season that arrived with high excitement and huge expectations hits rock bottom.
Over the course of a very accomplished career, Lovie has established himself as very serious and competitive. There’s no reason to assume that that’s changed now in Champaign.
You can forget about a bowl game now. The debut season of the Lovie Smith era is looking like 2-10, 3-9 at best. In the words of Run-DMC “it’s like that, and that’s the way it is.”
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 andBold 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.