Illini football never going to be big time
Please, fellas, just don't get Illinois on NCAA probation.
Fighting Illini athletic director Mike Thomas and head coach Tim Beckman are new to Champaign.
They might think they know what Illinois football is all about, but they have no idea.
Beckman's eyes are wide and tail bushy as he arrives on campus. In a way he's like every freshman coming in to get schooled.
“This is a gold mine,” he said at his introductory news conference.
Other qualified coaches have landed in central Illinois, panned the farmlands in the area for precious metals and come away with cow chips.
History indicates that while Illinois isn't necessarily where great football minds go to die, it is where head coaches stop on the way to becoming career assistants.
Why then do Illini athletic directors keep firing head coaches if the future is futile?
Because an AD has to at least pretend that the football program can do better.
At the same time the university president must give the impression that he notices failure, cares about it and won't tolerate it in football any more than in the liberal arts or sciences.
Another reason Illinois keeps firing football coaches is they figure if freakin' Wisconsin and Iowa can build consistent winners, the Illini also should be able to.
It is possible but the chemistry department hasn't mixed the formula yet.
For a while, Illinois football was known more for violations than victories. Previous athletic director Ron Guenther reduced the former but couldn't increase the latter.
Now Guenther is retired, Thomas was hired and the new AD, like Beckman, is talking a better game than Illinois customarily plays.
“He's not intimidated,” Thomas said of Beckman, “and he's not afraid to take a punch.”
It's doubtful that Thomas informed Beckman that the recent Rons, Zook and Turner, were punch drunk by the time Illinois fired them in 2004 and 2011, respectively.
Beckman was a successful head coach at Toledo the past three seasons, winning eight games each of the last two and going 14-2 in Mid-American Conference games.
Not bad except that Illinois isn't to the Big Ten what Toledo is to the MAC. Toledo has had it easier over the years matching up with the likes of Ohio University and Northern Illinois than Illinois has had with the likes of Ohio State and Michigan.
There's a reason Houston's Kevin Sumlin chose to coach Texas A&M instead of Illinois, while Boise State's Chris Peterson and Cincinnati's preferred to stay at their schools instead of coming to Illinois.
Rejection might have stunned and stung Thomas during the process to hire his first Illinois coach after mere months surveying Champaign's landscape.
My above observations probably sound pessimistic to you but should sound realistic to realists who lived Illini football most of their lives.
Thomas said that Beckman has a swagger to him. If so, the new coach is swaggering into a difficult assignment.
Illinois' upside over a long period of time is the upper tier of mediocrity rather than national championships, and bowl games in Memphis rather than Pasadena.
So for this Illinois alum who has had his eyes squinted and tail bushwhacked, hoping the best for the Illini means staying off NCAA probation.
Beyond that, finishing ahead of Northwestern in the Big Ten standings in most years would be a welcome albeit cheap thrill.
mimrem@dailyherald.com