REKINDLED LOVIE
HOT SEAT? NOT ANYMORE. SMITH HAS ILLINI TALKING SERIOUSLY ABOUT A BOWL BERTH.
Lovie Smith stood in a gray Illinois football hoodie, navy-blue Illini ballcap in his right hand, and smiled so big and wide it nearly made him unrecognizable from his distinctly stoic public persona.
The 61-year-old coach was in his happy place last Saturday, behind closed doors in a locker room bathed in the scent of fresh victory. Tightly encircled by his players, who dragged out ‘‘Yeahhh!’’ in giddy unison as they waited for him to speak, Smith raised his left palm and laughed as if to say, ‘‘All this for me?’’
The Illini had just poured a 28-0 second half on Rutgers in a third consecutive victory that moved them to 5-4, their season turned almost all the way around. All that’s left now is to find one more ‘‘W’’ in a closing stretch at Michigan State, at Iowa and home at Memorial Stadium against old rival Northwestern.
One more ‘‘W,’’ one more celebration like this — only bigger, wilder — and a five-year bowl-less streak, not to mention all the negative talk about the Illini that has come with it, is dead.
Michigan State happens to be a 15-point favorite, but why wait?
‘‘That a way to finish, men!’’ Smith said to his players. ‘‘Second half, playing ball.
‘‘We can talk a lot about this game, but you know what’s up next week, right? What are we playing for? Bowl game! That’s what we’re playing for.’’
The circle contracted into a single, delirious mass of navy blue and orange. Smith’s characteristically brief speech over, he raised a fist and broke it down:
‘‘One, two, three, bowl game!’’
One, two, three — the truth is, that’s hardly an abundance of chances to win another game for a team that lost to Eastern Michigan early on, that gave up nearly 700 yards to Nebraska in the Big Ten opener, that sat at 2-4 overall and 0-2 in conference play at the midpoint of the season.
Even after shocking then-No. 6 Wisconsin on homecoming and following that with commanding performances against Purdue and Rutgers, the Illini are 14-31 — and 7-26 in the Big Ten — during a Smith-led rebuild that’s only beginning to bear fruit in Year 4.
Quite frankly, the Illini — no matter how buoyed their spirits and how improved their play — are supposed to lose at Michigan State and at Iowa. Those teams have talent and pedigree that’s undeniable. If it comes down to the Northwestern game, well, who knows what the Wildcats, mired in longtime coach Pat Fitzgerald’s worst season, might be able to pull off as spoilers?
An 0-3 finish — no bowl, with Northwestern rejoicing on the Illini’s home turf — is the nightmare scenario.
But now we’ve slipped right into a pit of that aforementioned negativity, haven’t we? It’s just that it’s so easy to do and has been since a 6-0 start in 2011 — Ron Zook’s last season as coach — collapsed into a startling 0-6 heap. That gave way to the lamentable era of Tim Beckman, an embarrassingly in-overhis-head coach with no discernible strengths and all the gravitas of a sitcom P.E. teacher.
After Beckman was jettisoned and the program stagnated for a season with Bill Cubit at the helm, Smith came on board heading into the 2016 campaign and took on a monstrous task. After 3½ seasons of nothing-to-see-here Saturdays, Smith’s own reputation didn’t appear able to withstand many more hits. Had he made any real progress at all?
It turns out the answer is a pretty definitive yes. If the signature victory against Wisconsin didn’t prove that, then outclassing Purdue and Rutgers certainly did. Yes, those teams are bad, but that’s precisely the point: Until midway through October, Illinois was scraping the bottom of the barrel with them.
Besides, it isn’t about the details of whom the Illini have beaten. It’s about the feeling that has taken hold inside the program. Smith himself had it back in training camp, when he put his flagging reputation on the line with a bold declaration that the time for a winning season had arrived.
‘‘The memo was wrong,’’ he said then. ‘‘This is a good football team.’’
The needle has been moved, and the narrative has been changed. No more ‘‘hot seat’’ talk; Smith’s job is safe, if it wasn’t already. His approval rating among the fan base hasn’t been this high since the moments before his second game as coach, in 2016, when the Illini were trounced at home by North Carolina and a little-known quarterback by the name of Mitch Trubisky.
And that feeling inside the program is the real deal. All those players who were thrust into prominent roles — and pummeled for it — as freshmen are grizzled veterans now. Glue guys such as defensive backs Stanley Green and Nate Hobbs, linebackers Dele Harding and Jake Hanson and offensive linemen Alex Palczewski and Vederian Lowe have played a whole lot of football. They’ve earned the heck out of this moment in the sun.
‘‘There’s a little bit more giddy-up in everybody’s step, a little bit more excitement,’’ Smith said. ‘‘To be playing football that matters in November, that’s what we’re really most excited about. It’s an opportunity to do something we haven’t been able to do in a long time.’’
Kurt Kittner, one of the best quarterbacks in Illinois history and a former radio analyst during the Zook and Beckman years, was in Champaign for the Wisconsin upset. He was surprised by the result, of course, but far from shocked. Even in the earlier loss to Nebraska, which he also witnessed in person, he was encouraged by what he saw.
‘‘I told people early on the team is not that far off,’’ Kittner said. ‘‘You could see there’s more talent on the field than there was last year or the year before. It was a matter of guys finding their confidence and executing.’’
Kittner likened the victory against the Badgers to the game at Michigan during his sophomore season, 1999, when the Illini, off to an 0-3 start in Big Ten play, pulled off a stunning 35-29 upset of the No. 9 Wolverines.
‘‘That was when we realized we could play with anybody,’’ he said.
Two months later, Kittner and the Illini blew out Virginia in the school’s first bowl game in — you guessed it — five years. Two seasons after that, they were in the Sugar Bowl.
Is that where all this is headed for Smith’s Illini? To New Year’s Day-sized success?
Maybe next season or soon after that. But first comes the ongoing effort to scratch and claw to any bowl game, even one as short on prestige as the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit. That’s what multiple national media outlets have projected as the 2019 Illini’s destination.
It would be mighty fine as far as the guys in navy blue and orange are concerned.
Heavy underdogs at Michigan State? Smith isn’t running from it one bit.
‘‘This is the biggest game we’ve had here since I’ve been here,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s how we’re looking at it.’’
And you’d better believe he has told his players he expects to be 6-4 come Saturday afternoon.
‘‘Good football teams have to be able to go on the road and play well,’’ he said. ‘‘I think we’re built for that.’’
If so, it took awhile, didn’t it? Another postgame celebration — only bigger, wilder — just might make it more than worth the wait. ✶