Smith spent 11 seasons in the National Football League as a head coach and nine of them were spent with the Chicago Bears.
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Don’t forget that Smith hasn’t been a salesman to college recruits since he was a defensive backs coach at Ohio State in 1995. “Give us a chance”, he said.
Fresh off being hired to turn around a department filled with issues, IL athletic director Josh Whitman made an outside-the-box hire in Smith, who has his work cut out for him.
Smith’s job is to clean up the mess left by Tim Beckman, who went 12-25 overall and 4-20 in the Big Ten in three seasons.
This has prompted Smith to believe the Illini now belong to the city of Chicago. Smith said Lunt brings stability to the offense.
IL has finished with a losing record in 11 of the past 14 seasons, going 29-83 in Big Ten play during that span. An independent investigation lead to the coach’s firing just a week before the season, one that would end with Bill Cubit as interim coach and a 5-7 record.
“They’re the rebirth of our program”.
But changing perceptions is only part of the challenge facing Smith. “I’m excited about starting the football season”, Smith said. “We realize we have to put a better product on the field”. “It’s as simple as that”.
True, the team made a bowl game in 2014 but the following offseason they were rocked by scandal when former player Simon Cvijanovic said that Beckman forced him to play hurt.
Additionally, Illini Inquirer’s Jeremy Werner confirmed the program’s big on-campus recruiting event this Thursday. “And we’re embracing that”.
“Whether it’s coaching junior high, high school, college or the National Football League, I haven’t seen many differences from it”, he said. You have a different degree of athlete at every level. “I’m from Texas, so we’ll, of course, recruit that area”. He’s not talking about just his tenure in Tampa, as far as I can tell, but about his entire National Football League career. “I spent nine great years here, met a lot of great people, a lot of players that have become lifetime friends, so nothing but fond memories of Chicago”.
In terms of recruiting competition, we’ve documented how Northwestern has dominated the “team down South”. There’s a triangle of the St. Louis area, of course.
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Although Fitzgerald may have forgotten about him in his address to the media on Monday, the addition of Smith to the Big Ten is certainly not going unnoticed.
