Illinois football looks to brighter future after storm delays opener
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Given the turn of events surrounding Illinois athletics during this football offseason, it was fitting that the Illini endure one more obstacle before they finally returned to the football field.
After an unexpected two-hour rain delay, Illinois announced late Friday night that it would postpone its game against Kent State to 1 p.m. CT on Saturday. Consider it a cleansing of sorts — an appropriate washing away of the old and an entrance into a new era.
That new era was abruptly ushered in when athletic director Mike Thomas announced Aug. 28 that head coach Tim Beckman would be dismissed immediately — just a week before the season — following preliminary results of allegations of abuse toward players, which were initially made public in May by former Illini offensive lineman Simon Cvijanovic. Replacing Beckman is his offensive coordinator, Bill Cubit.
Common sense would lead most football fans to presume that losing a head coach a week before the season is less than ideal, but the situation here is anything but common. And some would even say that in this rarest of circumstances, Illinois fans are more excited for this season now that their previous head coach is gone.
“Surprisingly, it seems that way,” said former Illini All-American linebacker J Leman. “I sense a renewed optimism around the Illini faithful. I’d just never seen Illinois football fans as apathetic (as in) the last two or three years.”
Kent State-Illinois postponed until Saturday by lightning
Others were even more blunt in their assessment. The day Beckman was fired, one of his former players, Akeem Spence, tweeted, “Illinois just got better!!!”
Perhaps more surprising is that there is a sense that the coach Illinois had planned on employing going into this season, save for the investigation’s findings, was inconsequential to the team’s success all along.
“I don’t really think losing Beckman is going to affect them,” said Matt Silich, an Illinois student and editor of the Illini blog The Champaign Room. “I don’t know if it’s better. I think it’s probably not worse, though.”
Even before the season, Beckman was considered by many to be a lame duck. He was on the hot seat after three years of bad recruiting and a 12-25 record on the field, and by those measures alone, he could have been fired before this season.
But with Beckman gone, it’s a strange feeling here — one that falls somewhere between excitement and anxiousness. Perhaps more than anything, it’s a feeling that the inevitable has come early, bringing the future earlier than expected.
“It’s kind of relief right now, a lot of relief, because pretty much nobody liked Beckman,” said Silich.
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Cubit is, at least for now, an adequate form of relief. He has never been a head coach for a Power 5 team, and his teams at Western Michigan, where he coached from 2005 to 2012, never performed at an elite level. But he brought the Illinois offense to life last season and was largely credited for recruiting transfer quarterback Wes Lunt, who led the Illini to their first bowl game of the Beckman/Cubit era.
“People think he’s been holding the program up,” Silich said. “He’s been the rock star of the program.”
But the 61-year-old journeyman coach/coordinator is an understated rock star at best. He represents new hope for the program, but there is also a chance he is not part of the Illini’s future.
Thomas said Cubit, in his interim role, is auditioning for the job full-time, but Thomas is on the hot seat, as well, and very well may not be the person making the next hire. And even if Cubit was the best available candidate from what should be a competitive pool, he has not been fully cleared for wrongdoing in the Beckman scandal, either.
Though Thomas said preliminary results did not implicate any assistants in the scandal, the investigation is not completed, and it is unclear of Cvijanovic’s allegations against Cubit — that Cubit forced him off antidepressants — have been resolved.
“It’s kind of a catch-22 for fans, because they don’t really trust the athletic department, but they also don’t trust Cvijanovic,” Silich said. “Fans really like Cubit way more than Beckman, but there’s confusion over if Beckman was fired, why wasn’t the whole staff gone? Is it because they have to field a team?”
This is the space Cubit occupies within Illinois football — a bridge between the old and the new, but not a total departure from the pains of the Beckman era that still ail the Illini faithful.
Cubit will walk out onto the field at Memorial Stadium on Saturday, not in front of a program demoralized by the departure of its old coach, nor with all the fanfare and hope that comes with a new era. He represents hope, but also uncertainty.
When it rains, it pours on Illinois athletics, and that was certainly true in a literal sense Friday night. Whether it was a cleansing of the past or an omen for the future remains an unknown.
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