Quote:Personally... I think Illinois would be extremely short sighted to blindly hire a coach that has literally only won 9 games in the last two years... period.
Nobody's hiring PJ. Cubit's going to be at Illinois this year. He is the BEST choice to be HC this year, given that season is basically already kicking off. No HC is going to migrate to Illinois right now. That's not even a consideration at this point. It's Cubit @ Illinois.
Quote:Fleck will get his shot... but I really don't see it happening at this point... Even if we do well this year...
If we do well this year (8W by winning a bowl, or better) -- Fleck is staying with his very good contract. He won't get picked up bigtime going 8-5 again, even though 8-5 is a MUCH better result than last year's 8-5. His only motivation to leave would be for the sake of leaving Kzoo in general -- all while not getting any better of contract, as it'd be a lateral move (like a Tulsa or Tulane).
He'd need to go 9-4 this year to be considered for a bump-up. Illinois, after hiring Beckman after 3 season (one opening not good year, two 8W seasons) proved to be a bad decision.
With no OC/DC experience, Fleck would need to go to the MACC game and win a bowl (resulting in 10+ wins) for an Illinois or Rutgers to pick him up.
NEXT year, as you point out -- yeah, if he follows through on what we're "supposed" to do (which anti-Fleck folks want to happen This year) -- he's gone if there's any good P5 coaching openings.
Quote: I think that Cubit could actually take off there... and give Illinois a couple years to find the next big hire ...
I hope so. If so, then PJ vs Cubit would happen next year, and if WMU shines thru, at the end of next year at 10W, Illinois would very possibly hire PJ if Illinois 7-6 or worse.