Minnesota and Illinois are good football jobs, if you want to win.
Let me explain.
The Big Ten West is overrun by mediocrity right now. If every conference is a lawn, the Big Ten West is that patch you have in the backyard that’s been taken over by crabgrass, but at least it’s not chickweed.
Nebraska seems to be trending down, at least immediately. Wisconsin finally seems to be in that vortex of slippage that happens when you have such coaching upheaval in a short period of time: three head coaches within the last five years. Northwestern and Iowa are stable, but both are difficult places to continually stock with elite talent. Purdue is … well … terminally rebuilding from the Joe Tiller regime.
This larger environment makes it all the more curious that with coaching openings neither school expected when it hired the previous guy, Illinois and Minnesota quickly named their interim coaches to the permanent posts, both decisions being mildly curious at the very least.
Start with Minnesota, which named Tracy Claeys to the head coaching post in early November. This weekend’s loss to Wisconsin at home drops Claeys’ record as head coach (after taking over for Jerry Kill) to 1-4. Claeys is one of only nine FBS coaches that did not play college football, which means nothing other than that it’s an interesting statistic. Claeys has been an excellent assistant under Kill for over two decades.
The oddity comes in the fact that there are a lot of bright minds with head coaching experience who would probably love to talk to Minnesota. It’s a place you can immediately compete for a division title and are saddled with very few traditional threats within the division on an annual basis. Really, you could argue Nebraska is the only one.
Claeys’ first crack at the show was against Michigan in a highly publicized night game. Claeys and staff badly botched the end of it, mis-managing the clock and blowing at least one extra play, before opting to go for a fourth down rather than kick a chip shot field goal that would have sent the game into overtime.
One game doth not make a full truth, but certainly Minnesota should have wanted to see how the season played out for a guy who had not been a permanent head coach. More evaluations should have taken place before giving Claeys the keys to the new F-150, no? Apparently not.
As for Illinois, it’s a program that’s won eight or more games only three times since 1989. By contrast, Kansas has done it more times in the same span. Maybe this explains why Illinos gave interim coach Bill Cubit a 2-year extension, first reported Saturday.
It’s easy to suggest that the Illinois gig isn’t awash in unfettered glory, and that prosperity isn’t automatically on the horizon. Cubit is a safe hire, one who probably didn’t think when he came to Champaign that he’d end up being the head coach there. He came after voluntarily withdrawing his name from consideration for the Western Illinois head coaching post in 2012.
Cubit was respectable at Western Michigan, but his tenure ran its course after eight years. “Company and fish start to stink after three days.” The same can be said with the way fan bases view coaching staffs after a certain period of time.
This season, Illinois finished 5-7 under Cubit with wins over mediocre Nebraska, Kent State, aforementioned Western Illinois, Middle Tennessee State, and moribund Purdue. That hardly looks like what you’d assume the Illini are signing up for on an annual basis. This was a football team that had improved every season under previous coach Tim Beckman.
CHAMPAIGN, IL – OCTOBER 24: Head coach Bill Cubit of the Illinois Fighting Illini is seen during the game against the Wisconsin Badgers at Memorial Stadium on October 24, 2015 in Champaign, Illinois. (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
So why the haste to hire by these two schools?
It’s fair to note that none of us on the outside understand what’s gone on behind closed doors. Both coaches stepped in during surprisingly unexpected (and different) situations. Minnesota never would have assumed the sad departure of Kill because of health reasons. Illinois didn’t hire Beckman figuring it would need to can him right before the season started due to treatment of players.
It seems a little gun-jumpy to not at least interview multiple candidates. Contrary to popular practice, you can, in fact, search for a coach without hiring a search firm and blowing six figures. On top of that, every athletic director should have a name of guys he/she wants to call for these positions, in the event the head coach walks in the next day and says he’s out.
Maybe Cubit and Claeys were on that list, perhaps at the top.
Cubit and Claeys are a combined 6-11 this season, however. If that’s okay, fine. Is it going to be fine next year? The year after? If not, why? These are hard questions with answers only to be given down the road. The old saying goes, “get fired for anything other than losing.” Truer words are nary spoken.
In this case, “get hired for losing” applies too, at least immediately, at Minnesota and Illinois.
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