Illinois’ Lovie Smith extension KIND OF makes sense, but it’s still funny

This was not a good football season for Illinois.

The Illini lost six of their last seven games and finished with a paltry 4-8 record, good for last place in the Big Ten West again. That’s after winning a combined five games in the previous two seasons under Lovie Smith. All things being equal, it might be reasonable to think Illinois would consider firing a coach who went 9-27 over three seasons.

Okay, if you squint, you can understand the rationale here. If Illinois actually canned Smith now, they’d owe him a whopping $12 million. Plus, as athletic director Josh Whitman, who hired Smith immediately after arriving on the job, would tell the Chicago Tribune:

“Anytime you get a coach — especially in football and men’s basketball — where they have less than four years left on their contract, you start to leave them open to some criticism or vulnerability in terms of recruiting certainly,” Whitman told reporters Sunday. “We thought after this third year it was important to send that signal. Also, I think it’s an important time as we head into this recruiting cycle. We all understand the negative implications that a particular narrative could have on those efforts. If we allow that story to continue unchecked that Coach is in trouble and Illinois doesn’t have stability, that damages our ability to go out and recruit high-level players and to recruit high-level coaches.”

Based on recruiting stability, this isn’t a crazily irrational decision. Or even an unprecedented one (Rutgers gave Kyle Flood one, after all). But lets talk about optics here, just for a second.

Yes, this is a super young Illinois team. But with bowl eligibility still a possibility, the Illini got DRILLED by Iowa by 63 dang points, tied for the worst loss in school history. The last time Illinois lost by 63 points, it was to Chicago. That’s how long ago this was.

Giving up 63 points in one football game is very bad, especially if you don’t play in the Big 12. But giving up 63 points in three different games is much worse, typically not something that goes along with getting extensions. Penn State hung 63 up on Illinois on September 21, and Maryland dropped 63 on October 27. Also, Nebraska scored 54, Wisconsin scored 49 and Purdue scored 46.

Per S&P+, Illinois had the No. 122 defense out of 130 teams.

That’d be pretty bad for a Conference USA or a MAC team, not a team with Big Ten resources and budgets. Only Kansas, Louisville, and Rutgers have worse S&P+ ratings among Power 5 institutions, and two of them fired their coaches midseason. Illinois sits behinds stalwarts like Tulsa, Navy, Old Dominion, and two-win North Carolina and Arkansas squads.

That is technically an improvement, though. Illinois finished 118th in 2017. But they were 95th in 2016, Lovie’s first season.

To be fair, Illinois does have two very solid blue-chip recruits in its 2019 recruiting class, in Marquez Beason and Isaiah Williams. Those are top-150 recruits nationally, and if they stick, would be a major coup for the Illini.

But Illinois also only has 11 recruits in that 2019 class, and nobody else is close to that level. Right now, that recruiting class is ranked 12th in the conference per the 247Sports Composite, only ahead of Maryland and Rutgers.

Illinois has a good chance to improve at least a little bit in the win-loss column. Their 2019 out of conference schedule looks very easy (Akron, at UConn, Eastern Michigan), and 2020 looks just as manageable (Illinois State, UConn, Bowling Green).

They’ve been running one of the youngest teams in FBS over the last two seasons, and if you assume Smith can make some better assistant coaching hires thanks to this extension, maybe they can flirt with bowl eligibility in the next two seasons.

But the Illini have looked overmatched far more often than not over the last two seasons, and you’d like to see more momentum heading into year four of a rebuild. If this new extension doesn’t come with an increased financial commitment, anybody recruiting against Illinois should be able to say that Smith isn’t too likely to still be there in two seasons if the team doesn’t improve.

No matter what happens in the future, Illinois football is pretty lousy in the present. And that makes an extension, even if justifiable by industry standards, look pretty awkward.