Illinois Hires Lovie Smith

Well, that was fast. Lovie Smith will be combining elements of his last two coaching jobs – “wearing blue and orange” and “working for an organization going nowhere fast” – and will take over as head football coach at Illinois. Lovie’s a good coach who got screwed over in Tampa by nitwits who don’t understand the concept of rebuilding. He’s about the best coach Illinois could have found. What’s odd, though, is that Lovie would jump at this job. Unless he really loves Illinois, why not just collect checks from the Buccaneers for a while and see what’s out there after this season? And Illinois, why didn’t you make sure you had Lovie before you fired Cubit? What was plan B here?

Larry Hawley tweeted out the details of Smith’s contract with Illinois:

Illinois press release gives the details of Lovie Smith’s contract. 6 years, $21 million. @WGNNewspic.twitter.com/OvzuRpnvxe

— Larry Hawley (@HawleySports) March 7, 2016

Greg Auman of the Tampa Bay Times pointed out that the deal is backloaded since Smith is still getting paid by the Buccaneers for two more years. $5 million a year in the last two years of the deal is a pretty big risk for Illinois (I didn’t see any info on what a buyout would be at that point), but this move shows that they’re serious about turning that program around. The Big Ten West is pretty open (seriously, Delany, realign the conferences already) – Iowa should still be good and Nebraska should be better, but Wisconsin has to replace a few key players and Dave Aranda left some huge shoes to fill, Northwestern loses a lot of what made them so good last year, Minnesota was very average, and the other school is Purdue. Things won’t be easy early for Lovie, but if his bosses this time understand that whole rebuilding concept, he can turn Illinois into a solid program.

Also, it’s clear Josh Whitman isn’t playing around, so John Groce should probably start packing now.

Twitter: @KSchroeder2325

E-mail: schroeder.giig@gmail.com