Well, that certainly escalated quickly.
It didn’t take very long for Illini football fans’ excitement and hope to completely degenerate into despair, and then apathy. The March hire of Lovie Smith as Illinois Football Coach brought a level of buzz that the program has arguably not seen since the Rose Bowl season of 2007.
Week two saw Illinois sell out Memorial Stadium; for the first time since 2001 versus Michigan and the first non-conference affair since 1987.
However, the very next home game was a total blowout at the hands of P.J. Fleck’s Western Michigan before a house that was only about 2/3 full. The fans started checking out; that’s all it took for a base with a large group of notoriously fickle elements. Can’t say I blame them. When you’ve had just three nine win seasons and only one conference title/Rose Bowl since achieving both feats in 1983, it’s hard to have a lot of faith.
The next home contest, in front of a crowd roughly equal in size to the WMU game, saw an utterly unacceptable home loss to B1G laughingstock Purdue. By the way, the Boilermakers fired their head coach the very next week. Illini football fans, many of which are already notoriously paranoid by nature, now had legitimacy to their worries.
If you can’t handle lowly Purdue at home, then who can you beat?
Rutgers; that’s about it. And Illini football did take out RU by 17 the following week, but still found themselves outgained by 65 yards to the Scarlet Knights, who were coming off a 78-0 loss to Michigan the previous week.
When Illinois got their crack at Michigan, today, most Illini football fans had already proverbially and mentally flown south for the winter.
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/789922808956592128
They didn’t miss anything, as Illinois got outscored 31-0 in the first half of a game in which they entered as 39 point underdogs. Michigan had a 316-70 edge in total yards at the half; with Jeff George Jr, Illinois’ third string QB now playing due to injuries to both signal callers in front of him, going 0-7 passing for 0 yards and one pick. He finally completed his first pass with 8:38 to go in the third quarter.
Thus it only took till midseason for Illini football fans to find other things to do with their autumn Saturdays. Again, can’t say I blame you.
There wasn’t much orange on display at the Big House today- one major patch by the southeast end zone, and then a couple Illinois supporters scattered here and there. There’s still five games left this season, and things are so brutal right now that you already know 2017 isn’t going to be much better. Cleaning up a mess this dirty takes a very long time. It’s still difficult to understand how Illini football can be this bad, despite all the inherent advantages it has.
As I wrote in the Chicago Tribune RedEye on Wednesday:
Illinois is the nation’s fifth most populous state, yet its flagship university cannot keep top talent at home or build a consistently competitive program. As a U. of I. alumni donor with a long family history of alumni donors, this has perplexed me as well.
It’s a little astounding that Illinois is this bad though. They were 5-7 last year, and 6-7 the year before, which isn’t terrible. Yes, the program lost a lot of key players, but there simply shouldn’t be this kind of a drop off. Especially given Smith’s pedigree and resume. Likewise with the staff that he assembled. They really should not be this bad, but they are, and it makes one realize that you really have to be very, very VERY patient to give Smith time to turn this thing around.
This year is about playing all the kids; let the underclassmen get experience for the future. This year is long lost and most Illini football fans saw those warning signs against Western Michigan; then had those fears confirmed versus Purdue.
You must stay the course however. I firmly believe in the hire of Josh Whitman as Illini Athletic Director. I strongly believe in the Lovie Smith hire too. I just think we’re not going to see any results on the field till 2018 or 2019 at the earliest.
In today’s era of instant gratification via social media and 24/7 news cycle information overload, attention spans are shorter than they have ever been in history. Well, sorry but you’re just going to have to stick this one out. I’ve already received the “Fire Lovie Smith!” Tweets.
Actually, they’re more like “FIRE LOVIE SMITH!!!” in nature and they started coming in as early as the Nebraska game (ironically, the best showing of the season for Illini football thus far).
You got to give Lovie at least three years, possibly four. Every college coach that doesn’t utterly disgrace himself and the athletic program deserves three or four years. So dig your heels in Illini football fans, its going to be awhile.
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.