Illinois Fighting Illini Football

One quick perusal of Illinois' 2013 recruiting class shows five JUCO signees, which doesn't sound like a ton until you realize nobody else in the Big Ten signed more than three JUCOs (we checked).

Illinois' JUCO signees aren't the 5-star game-breaker types by any stretch of the imagination; the only offensive skill player is a wideout named Martize Barr, who had originally gone to New Mexico before going the JUCO route. 

The question, of course, is whether this is a sound strategy for Illinois head coach Tim Beckman. Obviously he can't overload on JUCOs every year, what with trying to fill 85 scholarship slots on 25 signees per year. So five out of 25 a year is, at the very least, sustainable.

But is it wise?

There is no tried-and-true, "one true way" formula for digging a program out of the basement of college football. Northwestern did it with solid coaching hires and the continuing existence of Pat Fitzgerald, while Vanderbilt's finally spending the kind of money on its program that the rest of the SEC does.

For Illinois, though, the JUCO route is one that has at least worked elsewhere. Bill Snyder made hay with the two-pronged approach of bringing in JUCO players who were ready to step onto the field from day one and by scheduling non-conference slates full of cupcakes. Snyder brought two I-AA schools to town his first year at KSU. The Wildcats still lost both games. Eventually that changed.

The junior college route, however, is where Snyder really made hay. Oddly enough, not many more teams go that route. Ron Prince tried copying that strategy (sort of the same way that Gary Andersen has tried going power run since taking over at Wisconsin), but his job wasn't long for this world. Snyder came back, of course, and as CBSSports.com points out, he had nearly a third of his 2012 roster devoted to JUCO players and other transfers.

Now, Illinois can't just cupcake its way to bowl eligibility—not with at least nine conference games coming and FCS teams now out of the question, per the Big Ten's new regulations.

But what Illinois can do at the very least is turn to JUCO guys, athletes who are at the very least physically seasoned enough to play from day one. Yes, there's a difference between even the best levels of junior college play and BCS conference-level competition. But it's a smaller difference than the one between high school and BCS conference levels, and on defense this approach should help Illinois transition to a personnel group that—with any luck—will have some success on the gridiron.

It's a bit of a mystery why Beckman didn't try this earlier. His first class at Illinois didn't feature any JUCO recruits whatsoever. While it's certainly nice from a sustainability standpoint to say "hey we're planning on building something long-term from day one here," if Beckman doesn't turn things around quickly in 2013 (just ask Danny Hope about job security at the have-nots in the Big Ten), he won't be around long enough to see his first class of high school recruits graduate.

Life in the Big Ten, baby. Win or go home.

As the University of Illinois continues to distance itself from what has been at times a racially insensitive depiction of Native Americans, it has to decide what to do about the fact that its official symbol has been just straight up a Native American guy. The mascot name may never go away—more on that later, in fact—but at the very least the visuals are going to be more tolerable.

To that end, the school discontinued the use of the dancing "Chief Illiniwek" mascot, and now the school is considering a new logo to boot. To that end, a University of Illinois student organization is taking charge of a movement to present the University with some options for a new logo, and it solicited student suggestions. Here's more from the Daily Illini:

Of the 46 symbols that students can vote for, the top 5 will be presented to University administration by Campus Spirit Revival, a registered student organization.

Based on the results of this vote, the University will decide whether to continue on with the process of choosing a new symbol.

Only Illinois students can vote (here), but fortunately the University of Illinois student organization put all 46 candidates on Facebook for perusal.

Some of the suggestions are good and some are ridiculous, and some make it clear that the artist didn't understand the point that this was for a symbol and not a new mascot or school nickname. So while a giant mechanical block "I" on tank treads is certainly a creative idea, it's not really what they were going for. Same goes for the, um, "Fighting Abes," which must have been based off a of scene from Lincoln that never made it past editing.

Before we get into the decent choices, there's one in particular that we'd like to single out.

Why would we point out this bit of silliness? Well, for this:

It's easier said than done to give Illinois a mascot, however, because basically any interpretation of "Fighting Illini" in a mascot is going to be racially offensive (hint, hint, Illinois). Thus, [...] an anthropomorphized state of Illinois, with arms and legs and a face right around where Rockford is. Does that sound stupid and insulting to everyone's intelligence? Then it's a good mascot.

That's not from the entry's description of the "artwork," if that's what you want to call it; it's from our suggestion of a new mascot for Illinois from five weeks ago. Now we're not saying this is plagiarism—in fact, we wish we'd thought of the Lincoln hat on top of the state—but we are thus throwing our editorial support behind it, even though it's not at all in the spirit of the competition.

There are some decent ideas therein that you should check out—this one of a WWI soldier, for example, is more than a little terrifying, but at least it's grounded in history. If the term "Fighting Illini" was originally used to describe soldiers from the university who had been sent off to war, then that's at least more historically appropriate than the term "Chief Illiniwek," which is about as accurate as referring to Charles de Gaulle as "King Frenchy". (The short version of that: The "Illiniwek" were not a tribe with a chief, but a confederation that actually called themselves the "Inoka." The more you know!)

Moreover, the school already has a proud tradition of honoring its war casualties, naming Memorial Stadium after them and honoring them there with engravings bearing the names of the 181 such soldiers from the school who lost their lives in WWI.

So if a logo went that direction, it'd at least have some historical backing.

Do we have time for one more silly idea, though? Yes, of course we do. Behold:

Rabid the Squirrel...who is holding a basketball...which means either the basketball is teeny-tiny or our friend Rabid here is the most enormous squirrel ever by orders of magnitude. But where's the mouth foam? You have to sell us on the rabies, folks. Right now it just looks like Surly the Squirrel.

Without question the 2012 football season for the Illinois Fighting Illini and first-year coach Tim Beckman was an unmitigated disaster.

To put it simply, this team was virtually unwatchable.

The Illini concluded their miserable season by getting pummeled 50-14 against in-state rival Northwestern last Saturday.  The loss extended their losing streak to nine games and gave them a final record of 2-10, which included an 0-8 record in the Big Ten.

If the record itself isn't enough to make you sick as an Illini fan, just take a look at some of the numbers.

In their 10 losses this season, Illinois was outscored 378-132.  In other words they lost by an average score of almost 38-13.

Really?  This is supposed to pass as competitive?

That's just flat out brutal.  And believe it or not, it gets worse.

The Illini finished the season dead last in the Big Ten in both scoring and total offense.  In addition, they also finished next to last in scoring defense and 10th in total defense.

So basically they had the worst offense and pretty close to the worst defense in the conference, which makes it fairly tough to win I would say.

How were the special teams you ask?  Well here's a stat for you.  The Illinois punt return unit finished dead last in the conference with an average of 1.6 yards per return.

Honestly, that's actually so bad that it's just funny.

Oh, but there's more.

Illinois also finished dead last in turnover margin, sacks given up and red-zone offense efficiency.

Despite all of this, the Illini did actually lead the conference in average yards per punt, which I'm guessing is because of the fact that they got more practice at it than everyone else.

To be honest, Beckman couldn't have asked for a worse way to start his tenure at Illinois.  He and his staff really didn't do anything to make Illini nation feel like they really have a football program and it was reflected in the attendance.

The average attendance at Memorial Stadium has now fallen for each of the past five seasons and that trend is likely to continue into next year.

The Illini fan base is quickly dwindling and it should be—there is nothing to see.

Why would people pay to see this mess?

You could say that by now Illinois football fans should be used to this type of season.  After all, over the past 20 years the Illini have only had seven winning seasons.

However, that still doesn't make it any easier to accept losing.

But the sad reality of the situation is that Illinois football is basically insignificant at this point.

Now it goes without saying that a coach typically needs more than one year to prove what he can do, but for Tim Beckman it's going to be an uphill battle and when I say uphill, I mean Mt. Everest.

This year's team simply looked listless and out of it's league almost each and every week.  They had no real weapons on offense and a defense that just completely underachieved. 

For a team that finished 7-6 in 2011 and was returning a majority of its starters to fall to 2-10 the next season should definitely raise some red flags.

AD Mike Thomas took a chance on Beckman and it certainly appears that may have been a mistake.  Then again, he didn't have many choices because no one else really wanted the job.

And that right there is the root of the problem at Illinois.  At this point it is not a school that can attract a proven big name football coach.

And because of that they really can't attract any of the top talent to Champaign either.  It's a sad state of affairs that doesn't look to have a glimmer of hope in the near future.

Thomas recently gave Beckman a vote of confidence by stating that Beckman would return next season as the Illinois head coach, much to the disappointment of many Illini fans I'm sure.

I wouldn't expect much improvement next season.

The fact of the matter is that at this point Illinois isn't even one of the top two football programs in the state despite being the biggest school.

With all due respect to Northwestern, the distinction of the best team in the state belongs to Northern Illinois University.

NIU coach Dave Doeren has gone 22-4 in his first two seasons in Dekalb and has the Huskies in the MAC championship game for the second year in a row.  In addition NIU has won 16 consecutive conference games, which is the longest such streak in the nation.

I'm not even sure Illinois would have finished .500 in the MAC conference.

There's no doubt that these are two programs headed in opposite directions.

The good news for Thomas and Illini fans is they may have found themselves a basketball coach in John Groce.

It's still early in the season, but Groce has the hoops team playing some inspired ball.  The same cannot be said for Beckman's football team.

Unlike Groce, Beckman's guys just never seemed to buy into his system and that's a problem that's not easily fixed.

My advice to Illini fans is to forget football—which shouldn't be hard to do—and enjoy your basketball team.

Because once again that's really all you've got.

One of the intriguing aspects of the new Tim Beckman regime at Illinois coming into the season was the way he had patterned his player management style after the competition-heavy, rewards-based style championed by one Urban Meyer.

Beckman doesn't have much else going for him at Illinois here in his first season, which is why the Illini are 2-6 and on a five-game losing streak. That losing streak has had a visible effect on Beckman, and the coach discussed it during his weekly Big Ten teleconference appearance. Here's how ESPN.com put it:

A five-game losing streak isn't the weight-loss plan Illinois coach Tim Beckman had envisioned. 

"How do I look? I've lost 22 pounds," the first-year Illini boss revealed this week. "You think I like losing?" 

Beckman joked Tuesday that he needed to lose the weight, and that his wife is pleased. But a rough initial campaign in Champaign seems to be taking a toll on Beckman [...].

Here's the problem: That, too, sounds a lot like Urban Meyer. The bad Urban Meyer. The one who nearly coached himself to death at Florida.

That's the road Beckman's going down by letting his job affect his health this badly. He can joke about his wife appreciating 22 lost pounds all he wants, but our guess is that his wife is actually a little less than thrilled about the condition he's in.

Stress is a killer. There's plenty here from LiveScience.com about the deleterious effects it can have on the human body. CBSNews.com has more about its link to elevated levels of a dangerous chemical in the blood. It can also ruin relationships and job prospects.

Granted, stress always comes with the job. There's no such thing as a stress-free football coach. That would be ridiculous. But stress, like everything else, needs to be managed, and if Beckman can't do that himself (signs are pointing to "no" on that one), he needs to find someone who can help.

This is a deadly, serious problem. 

The college football world was rocked—rocked, we say!—by Illinois coach Tim Beckman's blatant violation of NCAA rules when he was caught on camera taking a dip of chewing tobacco during Saturday's game against Wisconsin. The use of any tobacco products by coaches, players and officials during practices and games is prohibited by the NCAA.

To that end, Illinois self-reported a Level 2 violation to the NCAA, according to ESPN.com, over Beckman's chewing tobacco use. There's no word on what the punishment will be, but let's just say a consent decree isn't coming into play on this one. Image of the violation below is via Big Lead Sports.

But this all seems just a little unseemly, doesn't it?

Yes, tobacco use is gross. If that's your choice in life, great, do what you like and more power to you, but it's gross. Especially smoking. Smoking is great if you want everything about you—your home, your clothes, your breath and your skin—to smell like the shag carpet of your grandpa's cigar lounge in 1974. Sexy!

That said, tobacco products like cigarettes, cigars and chaw are legal. If Beckman wants everything to taste like the inside of Dean Martin's lungs for the duration of a 17-point loss to Wisconsin, he should be able to go ahead and do that.

The common argument against allowing this type of behavior is, of course, the role model issue. If young, impressionable children see a coach dipping, won't they want to dip too? Isn't normalizing this behavior really a tacit approval of lung and mouth cancer? Will Tim Beckman's tobacco use kill your child?

But coaches using tobacco don't exist in a bubble.

Young people are subjected to significant amounts of education about the dangers of tobacco use from the time they're able to understand words. Tobacco products have warning labels that are possibly the most dire of any commonly available product in America. And that's a good thing!

That said, if all that anti-tobacco education can be negated by the sight of one 50-something football coach surreptitiously taking some dip on the sidelines, guess what? The anti-tobacco education sucks.

And that's not Tim Beckman's problem to fix. Nor is it the NCAA's.

So let Tim Beckman put that nasty crap in his mouth if he wants. It's his own gross habit. The NCAA should only be in the business of regulating gross habits if every other more important thing is taken care of, and let's be honest: That's not something the NCAA's ever going to accomplish.

College football is littered with do's and don’ts inside the NCAA bylaws. Some of the rules are seemingly impossible to avoid, while others—like on-field tobacco use—should be easy to follow. 

Illinois football head coach Tim Beckman is seen in this photo (courtesy of Big Lead Sports) taking a huge dip from his regular Skoal can.

Is that long or short cut coach? Seriously though, this could be a violation of NCAA rules for the first year head coach.

The NCAA bylaws clearly state that:

"The use of tobacco products is prohibited for coaches, game officials and student athletes in all sports during practice and competition. A student-athlete who uses tobacco products during practice or competition is automatically disqualified for the remainder of that practice or game."

That can be found at 11.1.5 of the NCAA rule book. 

Just this May, Ohio State reported to the NCAA assistant coach Mike Vrabel had been using smokeless tobacco on the sidelines. It was considered a secondary violation for the school. It was reported with 46 other secondary violations against the Buckeyes this spring. 

While this may not be a major violation for the school, it is a blatant secondary issue for the coach and the Illini. 

Is this really a big deal though? 

One fan thought that it was. Assuming that @JoeDRobinson4 is a Wisconsin fan, this was his tweet:

Illinois Coach Tim Beckman chewing tobacco DURING a college football game? That can't be legal? yfrog.com/oce61ylj

— Joe Robinson (@JoeDRobinson4) October 6, 2012

I don’t possibly see how this could be worthy of an NCAA infraction. The NCAA has a ton of issues that it faces on a daily basis. Tobacco use by adults on a game-field seems to be pushing the envelope a bit. Actually, it is pretty ridiculous that this will cause Illinois issues. 

There will be an agent assigned to investigate and bring findings in this case. It will represent lost time and effort when much larger things are brewing around the college football world. 

I am sure that Miami (Fl.) would like to know its fate. Oregon is likely wondering what is going on after the Will Lyles and Lache Seastrunk debacle. Nothing has moved in those cases, but this will be attended to quite quickly. Especially after the national attention it received. 

With it being obvious this will result in NCAA secondary violations, where has the saltiness in coaches gone? There is no reason for the NCAA to try and regulate the actions of a coach to the level of tobacco use. It even denies the right to use tobacco at practice. 

While it is never a good thing to promote the use of such products, letting a coach take a dip on the sideline is not promoting the use of tobacco products. There are a number of ways the conversation could be turned to make it look non-beneficial to the coach. 

From here until eternity, please NCAA officials, please focus on meaningful investigations. Leave these ridiculous secondary violations off the list on the next rule book drafting. Mark Emmert says it’s in the works. Here’s to hoping that it is a lot different than the one that is on the table right now. 

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