As a fan
of Chicago’s sports teams, the notion that life is unfair came to me early. How
could some (say, New York Yankees’ fans) have so much while we have so little?
I frequently asked myself.
Then I
grew up a bit and went away to college, at the University of Illinois in
Champaign-Urbana, my state’s flagship U. There the lesson was repeated, only
with supporters of Ohio State University and the University of Michigan in the
roles of the fortunate. Sixty-plus years later those two institutions still
ride high in what is called the Big 10 Conference even though it has 14 members.
Even Yankees have had bad stretches in that span, for heaven’s sake.
Worse, though, is that the teams of
the university of the state just north of my homeland have prospered for all of
this century and more, while my Illini continue to founder (and flounder). I’m
talking about Wisconsin, which lately has been the foremost challenger to the Big
Ten’s Big Two. In basketball as well as football, the Badgers sup with the
mighty while the Illini scrounge the dumpsters for scraps. Oooo, that hurts.
The injustice of this situation is
easily seen. Illinois’s population of about 12.7 million is more than twice
Wisconsin’s 5.8 M, and Illinois contains the vast Chicago area, long a prep-sports
hotbed. Wisconsin is a bucolic place known mostly for cheese, lakes and brandy
consumption. If we Ilinoisians think of it at all it’s as a vacation spot,
somewhere convenient where we can catch a few fish and hurry home before
boredom sets in.
UW used
to be pretty much a sports patsy, with bad teams far outnumbering the good. Then
Barry Alvarez came along. Sinister looking (he favors dark glasses) and someone
with no Wisconsin ties (he’s from Pennsylvania, his college was Nebraska and he
was an assistant coach at Iowa and Notre Dame), he took over Badger football in
1990, and after three losing seasons put them on a track that, now, has led to
annual bowl games and conference-title contention. In basketball, the initial
magic man was Dick Bennett, whose tenure was short (1995-2001) but whose
influence was long, extending to this day.
Both men succeeded by building on the state’s
native strengths. Alvarez quickly
learned that Wisconsin produced an abundance of heifer-sized linemen but few
swift “skilled” players, so he fashioned a tough defense and ground-based
offense and opened a recruiting pipeline that brought in swifties from the
East, mainly New Jersey and New York. Bennett’s plan centered on defense and a disciplined,
pass-first offense that could succeed without recruiting classes studded with
the McDonald All Americans the state rarely produces. Derided as “white ball,” and
leading to low-scoring games, his system not only produced victories but also was
more easily replicable than schemes based on individual talents.
The Wisconsin plan in both sports emphasizes
continuity of style and local loyalties. Alvarez, now the school’s athletics
director, might have been an outlander but he planted a coaching tree that produced
his immediate successor Bret Bieleman (2006-12), who’d been one of his
assistants, and, since 2015, Paul Chryst, who also was promoted from the Badger
ranks. Wisconsin football teams look pretty much the same every season,
grinding out 300-yard rushing games while squelching the opposition. The school
hasn’t had a losing football season since 2001. It’s 2-0 so far this year and
ranked 14th nationally.
The
home-grown angle has been even stronger on the basketball side. Before coming
to Madison Bennett was a Wisconsin high-school coach who’d moved to the college
ranks through UW branches in Stevens Point and Green Bay. His successor, Bo
Ryan, followed the same career path, putting in 20-plus years coaching in places
like Dominican College in Racine and UW Platteville and Milwaukee before
ascending to Madison in 2001 at the advanced age of 53. He also followed
Bennett’s defense-first game schemes. When Ryan stepped down in 2015, after
compiling a 364-130 won-lost record, winning four Big !0 championships and
taking two teams to the NCAA Final Four, the school picked Greg Gard, his
assistant for 23 years, to replace him.
By
contrast, Illinois has the attention span of a mosquito, flitting from coach to
coach and style to style and having to start anew with each new regime. Nice-guy
Lou Henson ran the hoops program from 1975 to 1996, with much success, but
since he left it’s had five head basketball coaches, none with previous ties to
the state or university. A couple of those, Lon Kruger (1997-2000) and Bill
Self (2001-03), were certified aces whose teams fared well, but both were
mercenaries who fled Champaign as soon as jobs they wanted more beckoned. Bruce
Weber (2004-12) did well at first, taking a Self-recruited team to the 2005
NCAA championship game, but was fired after losing too many recruiting battles.
Ohioan John Groce (2013-17) took his teams nowhere and under the incumbent, Kansan
Brad Underwood, Illinois has had two straight losing seasons, something that hadn’t
happened since 1974 and ’75. Underwood
says things will improve once his fast-paced style is established, but we’ve
heard that before.
The
chronology in football is no better. The program also has had five head coaches
since 2000, one (Ron Zook) a big-school retread (he previously coached at
Florida), two smaller-school types (Tim Beckman and Bill Cubit), and two
refugees from the NFL, Ron Turner and the present guy, Lovie Smith. None had previous
ties to the Illini, and none could or can boast a winning record there.
Smith had been a winner with the
Chicago Bears but was long out of the college game. The Illini needed a Pied
Piper to resuscitate recruiting after the deplorable Beckham and interim-coach
Cubit, but while Lovie might know his X’s and O’s he has the personality of a
turnip. Illinois went 3-9, 2-10 and 4-8
in his first three seasons. It’s 2-1 so far this time, but lost to Eastern
Michigan the last time out, and tougher foes loom.
If Smith doesn’t show something in conference
play the school will again be in the coaching market. If it is it would be
well-advised to follow Wisconsin’s example and find someone who bleeds orange
and blue. It couldn’t do worse than it’s been doing.
2 comments:
Maybe not someone who bleeds Orange and Blue. Maybe someone who knows what it means to bleed Maize and Blue or Green and White and wants to make their mark. Start with the Athletic Director. Wisconsin hired true believer Pat Richter, who knew what he was looking for when he hired Alvarez.
Was it the comic book character, Sad Sack, that walked around with a black cloud over his head? If written a few years earlier, you could add the Cubbies to your list of disappointments. Cheer up! Stay away from basement windows.
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