Bret Bielema Takes Reins of Illinois Football

#126      
illini80
I think he was clearly the best coach we could get. We will see how his personality plays. I hope he’s a long term solution. I’ve had enough of the turmoil. I feel better about BB than I would have LL. Hope he can put together a great staff. I think those hires will tell us a lot about his chances to succeed.

side note: JW said this morning he couldn’t find anyone will anything negative to say about BB. Clearly he’s not reading this board!! 🤣🤣🤣
 
#127      
illinoistradition
ChiefGritty said:
It is certainly too much money.

Josh Whitman has the American corporate world brain worm where he tries to connote impressiveness and credibility by overpaying for executive leadership. But it is only minutely and indirectly my money, so who cares.
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I’m curious. How would we be able to justify paying him (or anyone for that matter) significantly below what Lovie was making? You can certainly criticize how much they paid Lovie, but at this point, any coach could come in and wonder why they aren’t getting paid just as much. And they are STILL paying Bielema less.
 
#128      
Cairo
MadtownIllin said:
This. After 50+ years of watching Illini football through mostly bad teams (undergrad in the mid 70's was brutal--the only thing that helped get you through the games was your wine skin with peppermint schnapps or jack) it will make it very difficult to watch knowing the scum bag that will be the coach. In addition living in Madison, I'll have to put up with the grief from Badger fans of BB being our coach--looks like I'll have to dig out that old wine skin...
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I respectfully disagree with your take. Humans make mistakes, humans can grow.
BB is going to come in here and work his tail off. Let's give him a fresh start and our support.
 
#129      
ChicagoKid
Yep - I am out of here. They hired the wrong Illinois native. Burt imploded at Arkansas and St. Louis coaches loathe him. In addition, we paid him a Top 20 salary for no reason - there was zero competition to get him. We are about to be Wisconsin Jr. led by a coach with an Iowa Hawkeyes tattoo.

Enjoy this one y'all. See you on the dark side of the moon.
 
#131      
Cairo
ChicagoKid said:
Yep - I am out of here. They hired the wrong Illinois native. Burt imploded at Arkansas and St. Louis coaches loathe him. In addition, we paid him a Top 20 salary for no reason - there was zero competition to get him. We are about to be Wisconsin Jr. led by a coach with an Iowa Hawkeyes tattoo.

Enjoy this one y'all. See you on the dark side of the moon.
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See ya
 
#133      
DocMorgan
illini80 said:
I think he was clearly the best coach we could get. We will see how his personality plays. I hope he’s a long term solution. I’ve had enough of the turmoil. I feel better about BB than I would have LL. Hope he can put together a great staff. I think those hires will tell us a lot about his chances to succeed.

side note: JW said this morning he couldn’t find anyone will anything negative to say about BB. Clearly he’s not reading this board!! 🤣🤣🤣
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If true, my respect level for JW has increased astronomically.
 
#134      
Whitewaterr
ChicagoKid said:
Yep - I am out of here. They hired the wrong Illinois native. Burt imploded at Arkansas and St. Louis coaches loathe him. In addition, we paid him a Top 20 salary for no reason - there was zero competition to get him. We are about to be Wisconsin Jr. led by a coach with an Iowa Hawkeyes tattoo.

Enjoy this one y'all. See you on the dark side of the moon.
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Hope you're as wrong as you were on your last prediction!
 
#135      
goorblue
Intriguing hire. Perhaps his time in the NFL allowed him to reassess and rehab his life. I trust JW. BB is part of the Hayden Fry coaching tree which is incredible. Barry Alvarez, Bob Stoops, Bill Snyder, Kirk Ferentz, Jay Norvell, Jim Leavitt and many others. Though not directly responsible for reconstruction projects at KSt, Iowa and WI he certainly was a participatory witness to all of those rebuilds. Recruiting: No other candidate on JW's short list could go into a living room a say with authority that I coached future Hall of Famers JJ Watt and Russell Wilson.
 
#137      
ChiefGritty
illinoistradition said:
I’m curious. How would we be able to justify paying him (or anyone for that matter) significantly below what Lovie was making? You can certainly criticize how much they paid Lovie, but at this point, any coach could come in and wonder why they aren’t getting paid just as much. And they are STILL paying Bielema less.
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That's actually not true, Lovie was only making $4 million per, though there was a year or possibly two in which he made $5MM (the contract was wonky to take advantage of the Bucs buyout, and there was a revision made somewhere along the line that moved some money around for unexplained reasons).

But no one would have batted an eyelash if it was like $3.3 million per or something. That would be an appropriate market rate.
 
#140      
DocMorgan
ChicagoKid said:
Yep - I am out of here. They hired the wrong Illinois native. Burt imploded at Arkansas and St. Louis coaches loathe him. In addition, we paid him a Top 20 salary for no reason - there was zero competition to get him. We are about to be Wisconsin Jr. led by a coach with an Iowa Hawkeyes tattoo.

Enjoy this one y'all. See you on the dark side of the moon.
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Two thoughts. I would not mind becoming Wisconsin Jr. and is it allowable to leave a parting shot before your self imposed deletion?
 
#143      
JJE
ChicagoKid said:
Yep - I am out of here. They hired the wrong Illinois native. Burt imploded at Arkansas and St. Louis coaches loathe him. In addition, we paid him a Top 20 salary for no reason - there was zero competition to get him. We are about to be Wisconsin Jr. led by a coach with an Iowa Hawkeyes tattoo.

Enjoy this one y'all. See you on the dark side of the moon.
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Lol. Ok. 👋
 
#146      
MadtownIllin
Cairo said:
I respectfully disagree with your take. Humans make mistakes, humans can grow.
BB is going to come in here and work his tail off. Let's give him a fresh start and our support.
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I'll give you one point--based on current pictures, he has definitely "grown"...
 
#147      
ChicagoKid
DocMorgan said:
Two thoughts. I would not mind becoming Wisconsin Jr. and is it allowable to leave a parting shot before your self imposed deletion?
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Yep. Please give me crow. I'm a man, I'll take it. But here's a little parting shot for you, Doc, from the winningest coach in Illinois and the leader of the St. Louis coaching organization.

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#148      
trtl
ILLINIborn said:
He will also have to recruit against Michigan, Ohio State and Notre Dame. As well as any national power coming after a top prospect.
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Not really. We can’t get many of those. We need to stop them from going to NU, WI, Purdue, Missouri, IA first. We will have had a great few years if at some point we are recruiting against the schools you mention.
 
#150      
Pikeillinifan
Surprised at this, but think it was the right thing and I hope he crushes it. Excited to see how things unfold - and I’m a BB fan now, never thought I’d say that!
 
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