Bernstein: Brad Underwood's Tall Task At Illinois
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) If he wins enough games in a short enough period of time, it will make no difference where new Illinois coach Brad Underwood was on athletic director Josh Whitman's list.
Underwood fled a deteriorating relationship with his boss at Oklahoma State at just the right moment to coincide with the need of Whitman and Illinois to find a sufficiently solid chair before the music stopped, choosing a fat paycheck and a nominal basketball school over lower-end money and perceived second-class status in football country.
Whitman got a coach he could say was his, after failing to deliver a Monty Williams moon shot and being rebuffed in back-channel outreach to Cuonzo Martin, who was already well down the road at that point in negotiations with Missouri. Whitman also has admitted that openings elsewhere complicated his timing, and he ran the risk of missing on names like Dayon's Archie Miller and Wichita State's Gregg Marshall as the NCAA tournament wore on. So Underwood it is, he of the respected tactical chops and clean background check, looking and sounding every bit of the part as he has made the initial rounds.
Even as he made the 53-year-old Underwood newly wealthy, Whitman also was able to keep some of his powder dry. He was working with as much as $25 million in pursuing Williams initially and others potentially but ended up guaranteeing $18 million over six years, a reasonable number in the current market that's sure to please his bosses. But what those above Whitman want more than anything is for the program to return to sustained national prominence and for Chicago players to be a big reason why.
And this is where the work begins for Underwood as he embarks further north on his head-coaching journey from Nacogdoches, Texas through Stillwater, Oklahoma and farther on to Champaign. There are no shortcuts to recruiting Chicago, even with the most trusted and connected lieutenants on a staff that's well-conceived and appropriately paid.
Underwood himself must be a constant and relentless presence in gyms across the city, forging relationships with the unique menagerie of high school coaches, AAU potentates, sportswear-company liaisons and various independent and nebulously connected friends and advisors. There's no substitute for shoe-leather and handshakes in this game, with even the most dedicated texting regimen from a downstate office still too regularly outflanked by another weary, middle-aged man actually getting on one more flight.
Talent can be found anywhere -- as all coaches are so quick to remind us -- but the most vocal and influential group of trustees and boosters behind the basketball program feels strongly that the state school should be on the short list for Chicago's top names every year instead of the afterthought it has largely become. Underwood is about to get up to speed fast on the peculiar duality of the culture he must inhabit, pleasing both the rural locals in and around the school itself and city-centered alums and recruiting base. It can be done, by winning.
If he really wants to fulfill the outsized expectations that he has begun to build during the first days of his roll-out as Illini coach, Underwood will need just the right combination of political skill and salesmanship, as well as resources and all of Whitman's support. A certain amount of discipline and methodically maintained plausible deniability might be a good idea, too.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Bernstein and Goff Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
