How to Fix University of Illinois Football
Missteps by Lovie Smith plentiful, but Chicagoland coaches agree program can turn fortunes around
Wednesday was national football signing day across the country, a day when millionaire coaches place bets on unpaid teenagers.
One of those teenagers schools is Josh Kreutz, a senior at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, IL and the son of former Chicago Bear Olin Kreutz. Kreutz, a 6-foot-2, 275-pound offensive lineman, chose the University of Illinois over offers from Northern Illinois, Memphis, Wyoming and several others.
Kreutz’s high school coach is John Holecek. In 14 seasons as Ramblers coach, Holecek has won 153 games and two Class 8A state titles. Loyola players have gone on to play in college at Notre Dame, Duke, Northwestern and at many other schools. But Kreutz is the first player in Holecek’s tenure to sign a scholarship with the state’s flagship university.
Holecek hasn’t heard from or seen any coaches from Illinois, including recently fired head coach Lovie Smith, in a long time.
“There’s an underground swell of disappointment as he (Smith) doesn’t get out and work Illinois and doesn’t even try,” Holecek said. “There’s just not a lot of presence. He hasn’t been around and hasn’t had an assistant coach in our building in a couple of years.”
(Photo Credit: The News-Gazette)
Holecek’s comment is telling. No Class 8A program in Illinois has won more games since 2006, Holecek’s first season, than Loyola. The fact that Kreutz is the first high school player from the school to sign with Illinois over that timeframe is a form of recruiting malpractice. Let’s not forget that Holecek is an Illinois graduate (class of ‘94).
The University of Illinois fired head football coach Lovie Smith on Dec. 10. Many candidates are rumored to replace Smith, some with Illinois ties, others with no state association but have winning pedigrees at other programs (Holecek said he is not a candidate).
Lack of wins and momentum in Champaign was cited by Fighting Illini Athletic Director Josh Whitman as reasons for cutting ties with Smith. If recruiting is the lifeblood of any college football program, Illinois is on life support, ranked last in the Big Ten and by a wide margin. Of 14 players signed in the 2021 class, Kreutz is lone commit with Chicagoland ties.
With Illinois looking for its fourth head coach since 2011, it raises questions:
Why hasn’t Illinois recruited more Chicagoland football players?
Can the new coach change that fact and fill future Fighting Illini rosters with the area’s best and brightest?
I interviewed Holecek and head coaches from two high class (7 and 8A) suburban schools looking for answers.
In a typical December, not during a viral pandemic, the offices of high school football coaches are like courtrooms during a trial. People are everywhere.
College coaches, their regular seasons complete, hit the road the last month of the calendar year, in search of the next crop of talent for future seasons. Reasons for the visits from college coaches can range from checking in on a player already committed to their school (seniors), to evaluating junior year prospects or asking for lists of names of underclassmen who are rising stars.
“Last year (2019) during the visiting period, we had (coaches from) Michigan, Michigan State, Iowa, Wisconsin, all the MAC (Mid-American Conference) schools. They all came in,” Lake Zurich head coach Ron Planz said.
There was one notable exception.
“Illinois did not come into our school. They did not come into Lake Zurich,” Planz said. “Maybe they felt we didn’t have anybody worth recruiting or not as high on the list compared to other guys.”
The Bears have made five appearances in the Class 7A state title game since 2006. Over that time, dozens of players have gone on to play in college. Recent Division 1 recruits include tight end Hunter Welcing, now a freshman at Northwestern, linebacker Jack Sanborn, a current Wisconsin junior and Sanborn’s younger brother, Bryan Sanborn, a Lake Zurich senior. On Dec. 16, Bryan Sanborn committed to Wisconsin.
According to the Rivals.com recruiting website, none of those players were offered scholarships by Illinois.
Planz, a former head coach at Division 3 Elmhurst College, said there are built in challenges recruiting Chicagoland prospects for any coaching staff at Illinois. Some of those challenges are baked in the psyche of kids from a young age.
“Illinois (Champaign) is far away from Chicago. It doesn’t have a huge media presence. Chicago is more of a pro sports town than a college town,” Planz said. “Our school (Lake Zurich) has kids go all over the country. They will go out, live their lives, and I’d say 80 percent of them will settle back in (Chicagoland). When they grow up and their mom and dad went to Texas A&M, why would they think that Illinois is the best place for them?
“There will always be that battle for the (coaching) staff at Illinois.”
Planz recalls while at Elmhurst an emphasis on recruiting local athletes. That’s easier said than done, especially in the high-pressure, win-now culture of Power 5 college football when player development can take a back seat to winning and instant gratification.
“When you are getting let go after one or two years, you don’t have time to develop. You are recruiting guys that can come in right away,” Planz said. “In Illinois, we are pretty restrictive in what we can do. Our guys play football in the fall and that’s it. So what happens is they have to make a projection on what they (recruits) can or can’t be. You have to roll the dice a bit more.”
Smith, hired in 2016, may not have wanted to take the risk in recruiting players that needed a year or two of development. According to SI.com, heading into the 2020 season, Illinois had 15 players on its roster that landed in Champaign via transfer from other Division 1 or FCS-level schools. Compare that number with the 13 signees in the 2020 class from high school, prep schools or junior colleges.
None of the 13 signees were from the state of Illinois.
One of the area’s top rated recruits in the 2020 class was Warren’s Willis Singleton.
A 6-foot-2, 290-pound defensive lineman, Singleton was at one time rated the 26th-best player in Illinois in his class by Rivals.com.
“A great kid who comes from a great family. His father, (Willis, Sr.) went to Illinois,” Warren coach Bryan McNulty said.
The Fighting Illini were late in identifying Singleton. Iowa State swooped in with an offer as did other Power 5 programs. Illinois finally got around to offering Singleton, but by then it was too late.
He signed with the Cyclones in December of 2019.
“What a perfect kid to go (to Illinois),” McNulty said. “They dragged their feet and (Singleton) went to Iowa State.”
McNulty was hired as Blue Devils coach before the 2014 season. Warren has won 47 games in his six seasons that includes a 23-3 record in 2018-19 and Class 8A state title appearance in 2019.
Only one player he’s coached, Caleb Reams, a 2015 graduate, has signed a scholarship offer from Illinois. Another player, wide receiver Micah Jones, was offered but chose Notre Dame in 2017.
When the visitation period begins every December, it takes awhile before McNulty sees any Illinois coaches, if at all.
“They are usually not the first school we see,” McNulty said. “If I have a Big Ten kid, I’d be more likely to call (Iowa assistant) Seth Wallace just because I see him all the time.
“Sometimes we go an entire offseason without seeing (Illinois coaches). It’s not a sour relationship, we just don’t know them.”
Chicagoland is vast, with hundreds of high schools. But from the experiences of Holecek, Planz and McNulty, coaches at three of the most successful suburban high school programs, conclusions can be drawn.
In his five seasons at Illinois, Smith either willfully ignored recruits in his program’s home state or believed he could gain a competitive advantage implementing other strategies.
(Photo Credit: Chicago Tribune)
Whatever the tactical reason, results on the field were dismal as his .304 winning percentage proved. The new coach will not be facing a re-build, but a massive construction project.
Job tasks can be labeled under two categories—controllables and uncontrollables.
Uncontrollable: The university is not being relocated. Champaign will remain a two-and-a-half to three-hour drive, farther than universities in boarding states Wisconsin and Indiana.
“(University of Wisconsin) is 90 minutes away. Notre Dame is two hours. There are all these schools that a really competitive that are close,” McNulty said.
“Northwestern, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Purdue, They are pretty much closer to Chicagoland kids,” Holecek said. “Chicago is so overly recruited its’ tough to get a leg up unless you have something special about our program.”
Controllable: Holecek believes a uniqueness about Illinois can be found. And it doesn’t need to be ingenious intellectual property engineered by the next coaching staff.
When Holecek played for the Fighting Illini in the early 1990’s, his linebacker positional group was filled with in-state kids like him (Holecek attended Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights).
“They were from East St. Louis and a lot of my friends were from Chicago or Springfield,” Holecek said.
The most successful teams have rosters filled with Illinois kids, Holecek said, citing the large numbers of Illinois players on the 1983 and 2007 Rose Bowl teams.
“There has to be a segment from the state,” he said.
That can be accomplished with a coach who is not only passionate about recruiting, but also knows how to connect with teenage boys in the decade of the 2020’s.
Illinois’s brand-new 107,650 square foot, $79 million facility, is the shiny toy that helps the school keep up in the Recruiting Industrial Complex that is Power 5 football. But nothing replaces genuine one-on-one relationships with recruits, which Holecek said can be done amidst a increasingly digital-reliant culture.
“In this day and age and neediness of the high school athlete that want instantaneous success although they haven’t done anything on the field, you need a coach that is energetic and is up to date on social media and someone that is high energy,” Holecek said. “I look at the next coach as someone who is an amazing recruiter and personality that really reaches out to kids who will say, ‘I want to play for this guy because he really loves his job and loves the program and loves the players.’”
Holecek mentions current Kent State coach Sean Lewis as someone who fits the profile he described. Lewis has an Illinois background (played at Richards High School in south suburban Oak Lawn), is 34 years old and has gone 10-7 the past two seasons at Kent State (the Golden Flashes were 16-55 from 2013-2018).
Chuck Martin, the head coach at Miami of Ohio and a longtime assistant coach under Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly, is another name Holecek said would be a good candidate.
McNulty said a new coach needs to have a dynamic personality who invests in relationships and understands the geography of the state.
“When Illinois was going good, they were getting kids from the St. Louis area, East St. Louis area and pulling in a lot of Joliet Catholic and Mt. Carmel kids. So someone who knows the Catholic League guys, knows Illinois,” McNulty said. “They have to make Illinois a priority.”
Said Planz: “If I was taking over at Illinois, I’d try and get ahold of every coach of a kid in that top 10 list and find out why he didn’t go to Illinois. If the coach says, ‘well Illinois didn’t recruit him, they didn’t like the location, the academics, didn’t like the other players on the team,’ whatever the reason is, that’s what I would do. The first thing you can do is find out the why nots and once you know the why nots, you can try and fix your problems.”
One problem in Illinois has nothing to do with football.
The persistent stream of political misconduct and unpleasant news does not help create an image of a university recruits want to be associated with.
“The amount of corruption that is going on in our legislature and debt and that the University of Illinois doesn’t get any money from the state because we are broke and the pension crisis, this obviously has a lot do with kids not taking pride in Illinois,” Holecek said. “If you are from Illinois, in recent years, all you hear about is how people want to get the heck out as fast as possible.
“It’s constant bad news in Illinois and that’s bad news for all of us.”
But a new hiring cycle brings a climate of optimism. Will this be the year Illinois finally finds its Pat Fitzgerald?
It won’t be Holecek, who chuckles at internet rumors of his candidacy, saying he has no plans to interview for the position.
Whomever the new hire is, there is much to sell about Illinois and eager high school coaches willing to help out.
“When you go down there, it is a nice campus with a quality education. It has all those things going for it,” McNulty said. “Kids should want to go to Illinois. It’s our state school.”