Baffoe: Lovie Smith At Least Brings Interest To Illini Football
By Tim Baffoe--
(CBS) I had to Google the University of Illinois football roster today.
Admittedly I'm bad with names, but scanning the program's spring roster, I confirmed what I already knew: I don't recognize any of these names.
Lookie there -- Jeff George Jr. Oh, the punter went to a high school near my house. Hey, they have a defensive lineman who wears No. 11 and is named Chunky Clements. Wait wait wait, I lied -- I do know the name Wes Lunt because it sounds like a character a Victorian author created before passing out drunk.
My obliviousness isn't a knock against the players themselves. It's that I haven't cared about Illini football in more than a decade. And I only paid attention in some of the Ron Turner years because two guys I went to high school with played prominent roles.
That now changes with the hiring of Lovie Smith as head coach. I'm suddenly interested in Illinois football, which -- beyond the national embarrassment the athletic department as a whole had been for almost a year -- is something a few days ago was as likely as me dancing at a wedding reception in Mexico in a luchador mask.
That's a something at least, right? (My interest, not that picture.) And I think I'm representative of a lot of people in the Chicagoland area who aren't Illinois alumni. Illini football has too long been a non-starter in the college football conversation around here.
New athletic director Josh Whitman, who has made it clear he's not about continuing the running joke of a department he took over, wasted no time in paying Bill Cubit a lot of money to leave -- like literally, as Cubit was fired on Whitman's first official day on the job.
"I just came in and (Whitman) said, 'I'm letting you go,'" a shocked Cubit told The Associated Press.
While feeling bad for Cubit, even my distant paying attention to Illinois thought, "The fustercluck continues in Champaign."
But with the Smith hire, it's obvious that assumption was wrong. I now feel bad for Cubit in the way I felt bad a year ago for former Cubs manager Ricky Renteria when he was suddenly replaced with the available Joe Maddon. Sorry, nice guy, but this is the business of winning.
Whitman wants Illini football to be relevant, nay, is demanding it with this series of quick, decisive moves. He probably understands wins aren't coming in gobs right away, but winning respect and that translating to winning back fans and maybe creating some new ones is the key with this program so sore from a recent fiasco.
"Naming Lovie Smith as the Illinois head football coach is the first step in taking this program to a place of national prominence," Whitman said Monday.
National prominence and not national head-scratcher. It's the first note Whitman made regarding Smith being brought in. Get people here and afar interested in Illinois either again or for the first time ever.
"We will build a program that contends annually for Big Ten and national championships," Whitman said. "The timing for this move was extremely tight, and we needed to move quickly. A coach of Lovie's caliber would not have been available to us if we had waited until after the 2016 season. Lovie's reputation as a coach, and even more so as a person, made it clear it was an awesome opportunity for the University of Illinois."
Translation: We're not messing around anymore. Responsibility is being established in the Illinois athletic department, starting with football. And whatever leftover Chicago Bears fan feelings one might have for Smith, you can't argue the man doesn't bring a sense of stability to this job. He's nothing resembling incompetent, and his sometimes maddening Lovie-speak in press conferences hurts our ears but will never hurt his football teams.
In fact, hell, I miss Loviespeak. Talk in platitudes, dude. Undermine my intelligence at the podium like those sweet Bears days of yore.
"(Teaching) is what made the job so attractive to me, the feeling that I can do that," Smith told still-reeling media and fans Monday. "When you can have the most impact on young men's lives is during that time, when they're leaving high school and coming to college. I feel like I'm a teacher. And when I look for coaches for my staff, I'm looking for stern teachers.
"That's the perfect age to get them to come buy in, the perfect age to see the impact you're having on their lives. Once you get to the NFL, a lot has already been done and been in place. Who you are has been established. Having a chance to impact lives like that, you have to jump on board."
OMIGOSH SHOOT THAT TAPIOCA INTO MY VEINS. Because I know Smith will be running a tight ship with player respect behind closed doors. And how that translates to the Big Ten intrigues me very much. I have no love or hate for Illinois, so this is all an experiment I want to view out of sheer curiosity.
But there is curiosity, even if it's subconsciously morbid curiosity. There's a lack of apathy in me. Something, anything in many more now-going-to-be onlookers like me is extremely important for Fighting Illini football.
Now I'm going to Google their 2016 schedule and see if they can be .500.
Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.
