gatnom

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 09:35 PM) Its not a great class, but its hard to expect much with one BT win in 2 years. Its kind of like chicken and the egg. They have to put up wins this year to have any chance to recruit a 2015 class. Don't win, and TB is gone and recruiting starts again. I cant be shocked or pissed our class isn't great. But, this class isn't as bad as most think when you factor in James, Ayoola and Lunt. Plus nice little blurb here http://247sports.com/Article/Big-Ten-Signi...it-again-175918 Now you have to win games. Nothing else matters right now. You have enough immediate impact guys and returning players to do so. I'm not going to pretend like the Illinois class is anything other than 11-12 in the conference, but I think it's interesting that, at least on rivals, Illinois has a comparable or better average star rating to 4 other teams and are marginally behind 2-3 others. It's a bad class. However, I think people are exaggerating the difference between Illinois and, say, Iowa. Throw in some good transfers/returnees and maybe we can win enough to get somebody in the state of Illinois to care about the state school. Or, maybe we don't, and we get the thrill of yet another disappointing coaching search

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 29, 2014 -> 09:32 AM) They should be undefeated. They've choked away every game but the Michigan one. Michigan flat beat them. Brutal. They have to learn from these losses.

QUOTE (Brian @ Jan 12, 2014 -> 07:19 PM) Wow, Illinois.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Dec 31, 2013 -> 04:03 PM) Quite the flop by Ferrell Not the first time he did it either. Earlier in the game the ref gave him an arms out "wtf" look lol.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Dec 31, 2013 -> 03:33 PM) Indiana shooting inexplicably well from 3 today. Hard to win games when the opponent shoots that much over their average. I know what you mean, but it's hard to complain about the other team hitting mostly wide open 3's. Ferrell seemingly can't miss, though.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Dec 31, 2013 -> 03:29 PM) Illinois has gone stagnant and Indiana is scoring almost every time down. Not looking good for the Illini. Getting ugly in a hurry.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Dec 22, 2013 -> 06:06 PM) Giants had a great opportunity to end it there. They might be better off with Stafford throwing the ball than Eli.

QUOTE (Jake @ Dec 21, 2013 -> 11:40 PM) I want a gif of Rayvonte going full cornholio after the buzzer

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 21, 2013 -> 03:01 PM) Any NFC north predictions for tomorrow? Packers/Lions lose, Bears win/clinch Packers, Bears win, Lions lose Bears, Packers lose, Lions win Any other variation? The way this season is going, I'm expecting all three to lose.

I like having college football on Saturdays and NFL on Sundays. I think I like college sports more than most though.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 12, 2013 -> 04:40 PM) Honestly I've never heard of the unwritten "at least three years" rule, and if there is such a thing, i think it's pretty stupid. Again, tell me who in their right mind thinks 1-18 in conference play in two years is acceptable, even for a guy taking over a s***ty roster (which we've established isn't really THAT s***ty given the defense they had last year and the offense they had this year). I've never heard of Thomas having a sketchy reputation. What's the back story there? As for the bold point, I'm not anywhere near connected enough to know, but the rumor is that the main reason Thomas was hired was that he was willing to come in and clean house from the previous AD. And, he did. Whether or not that even qualifies as a sketchy reputation is somewhat up for debate. With respect to the first part of your post, did you know that Barry Alvarez had a 6-16 overall record and was 2-14 in conference in his first two years? There are numerous other coaches who had similar starts to their coaching tenures. You need to give a coach time even if he is "obviously incompetent." (not your words, per se) Unfortunately necessary disclaimer: I'm not saying Beckman is anywhere near Barry Alvarez in terms of coaching ability and not saying that Beckman will succeed. If anything, I think he's going to fail due to his seeming inability to consistently make good coaching hires and the overwhelming negativity surrounding him.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Dec 12, 2013 -> 12:21 PM) Those expectations weren't all due to a terrible coach, it was due to a terrible program and roster as well. Again, not sure what you wanted or expected this year. Far from the first coach to take over a program and suck the first year, especially taking over a team that tanked the 2nd half of last year (and was a mirage the first half). And got their coach fired. And the DC left. They weren't supposed to be good if you remember the end of 2011. And DC left. And that talent as you said. LOL at La Tech being a s***ty WAC team. 57 against A&M. It's probably worth mentioning that they lost their top wide receiver, corner, defensive lineman, and offensive lineman without having suitable replacements, let alone any depth. Add in some injury issues and lack of buy in by the players to exacerbate the depth concerns, and you have one abomination of a season on your hands. Obviously, if Beckman hadn't sucked at hiring coaches in his first staff, we might have won another game or two, but there is no way to know for sure exactly what could have been. QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 12, 2013 -> 12:29 PM) Holy s*** that LA Tech team scored 618 points in 12 games, 51.5 PPG Illinois does a great job of non-conference scheduling.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Dec 12, 2013 -> 11:50 AM) Not what I said. I said Beckman being credited for improving his dumpster fire coaching job in year one is ridiculous. Probably what they did. Those expectations were thanks to a terrible coach. Not all of last year was his fault, but if you want to pin it all on him, I guess there's nothing we can do to stop you.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 7, 2013 -> 04:21 PM) Not sure this is a game mizzou can hang in. Damn. But comparing anything mizzou to Illinois lol. I meant it more as a compliment to Auburn haha, but Mizzou is definitely going to have to find an answer for the run game if they want to pull it out.

Watching Auburn run the ball right now is like watching [insert bad team here] run the ball against Illinois.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 06:29 PM) I will say that Illinois high school football does not produce a lot of talent so if you're relying on that you're going to be up and down. I know they never would completely rely on in-state talent, but any state school is better when the in-state talent is better. Illinois is a basketball state, U of I reflects that. The problem isn't so much the amount of in state talent but the fact that Illinois gets essentially none of the top recruits in the state. Illinois is always going to have to fight for the leftovers in states like Ohio, but it would be extremely helpful if the few really good players in Illinois actually stayed. For those interested, the guy who used to run the Illinois Rivals site wrote a lengthy post about what he believed to be the problem with Illinois here:

Scholarship situation: solved.

I voted for option 3. I don't want to lose a draft pick by signing a top free agent, and I don't see any veterans on our roster who would fetch much in terms of prospects. I would be open to trading one of our starting pitchers for help at the major league level, but I'd mostly like to see some small moves to fill in gaps.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 3, 2013 -> 08:19 AM) Well his recruiting dipped at the end, which explains this roster. But I would definitely choose a front loaded roster over 70 MAC players that fit like a glove. Well, the best college football team in Illinois is in the MAC...

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 10:00 PM) Wait, what? How does Beckman do recruiting better? Recruiting was the one thing Zook did right. Only USC and Bama had more first round picks from 07-12. That sounds better than "good guy" 2 stars. First time I have ever seen Zook called out for his recruiting. I didn't call Zook out for "recruiting" per se. Zook was absolutely abysmal at planning for the future. Recruiting is a lot more than just getting the most athletic guys to commit to your team. Most fans just look at star rankings and decide whether or not somebody is a good "recruiter." Honestly, getting guys that fit is just as important if not more so than getting the best athletes. This was an aspect that Zook failed miserably. You can't honestly look at our defense right now and tell me that Zook planned it out well. First round picks are great, but what about the 70 other scholarship players on the team?

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 07:52 PM) Zook also recruited a lot of players that are playing on Sundays. He may make the worst in game decisions in CFB history, but he had talented players that liked to play for him. His second year in Chambana was way better than Beckmans has been, and that was with Ron Turner's recruits. Ron Zook was a way better recruiter than Beckman, there's no doubt. However, Zook just didn't seem to have much of a plan with what he was doing, and I think Beckman handles the recruiting aspect of the job much better.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 07:14 PM) The recruiting is going to get even worse because he is a lame duck coach. It is time to act now. And he certainly is not better at running a program than Zook, or he hasn't come remotely close to showing it. Not that Zook was some mastermind, but he was soooooo much better than Beckman has ever been. I lost the numbers, but the scoring margin for Zook vs Beckman (even in Zook's first and last years) is a blowout in favor of Zook. We aren't even remotely competitive under Timmy. Zook also got us to a Rose Bowl while Beckman has lost 12 straight Big 10 games. You cannot possibly say Beckman is "significantly better at running a program than Zook". There's 0 evidence of that. I meant keeping kids out of trouble and on the team. He hasn't recruited, for the most part, guys who are unable to actually play football here. He also seems to be not allergic to recruiting defensive backs and offensive tackles. So many of Zook's recruits fizzled out, failed out, played out of position, or got kicked out of school. This doesn't seem to be a problem with Beckman, and that is what I meant by being better at running a program. QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 07:14 PM) This is not the question you should be asking. Really, it should be, "could we possibly do any worse than Tim Beckman?" And since we can't win a single Big Ten game, and can't even be remotely competitive in most of those games, the answer is definitely no, you cannot. At the extreme worst case scenario, we hire the second coming of Tim Beckman, which is the same as keeping him. He's the worst we can do. Yes, we can do worse than Beckman.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 05:26 PM) So you would like to take a wait-and-see approach with a coach that has proven to be awful in-game and has been recruiting at the bottom of the B1G? That seems like a recipe for disaster. At least right now the Illini have two QBs in Lunt and Bailey that a different coach might be able to capitalize on. You're kind of exaggerating the recruiting (at least with respect to last year). Ultimately, I think Beckman can run a mediocre program. Despite the fact that he is significantly better at running a program than Zook, I don't think he can exceed that because I don't think he's good enough at identifying coaches to overcome his scheme deficiencies. This leads us to "what kind of an idiot would take on this team basically full of 3-star or less sophomores while realizing he has only 2 years to turn it around?" I'm not necessarily opposed to a coaching change. However, I don't think probably making this team worse by losing the little talent we have by firing Beckman is actually worth maybe getting a better coach who might get the rebuild moving along more quickly (not a guarantee by any means). Is there a coach out there better than Beckman? Probably. But, would he be willing to take this job? I know I wouldn't risk my career on Illinois, at least not right now while it's so far buried.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 05:10 PM) Yes, that shows how Zook screwed up near the end, but it's not like Beckman has come in and is lighting the world on fire with his recruiting. Most of the players that are committed have MAC type offers. I don't think the Illini will be trending upwards with low 3 star and 2 star players for recruits. Once they gain experience, they will improve. At the very least, they'll get bigger and stronger. Whether or not the recruits are good enough to be mediocre with experience is debatable, I guess.

QUOTE (Boogua @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 02:53 PM) What makes you think it will get better and not worse? The recruiting hasn't exactly been good. This blog post here sums up my thoughts pretty nicely: http://illiniboard.com/2013/10/21/expounding/