COLUMN: Whitman deserves credit negotiating Illini onto unearned stages
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Josh Whitman and his lieutenants in the Illinois athletics office accomplished remarkable.
When Illinois officially announced Monday their participation in a 2021 regular-season opener in Dublin, Ireland against Nebraska, Whitman has remarkably negotiated his school into what is essentially a glorified bowl game situation without ever actually needing to earn such a privilege.
“I think certainly we hope to have a couple more bowl trips between now and then,” the Illinois athletics director said Monday.
And this is a public relations response by Whitman to my question on whether this could resemble a bowl trip for a program that hasn’t participated in such an event since 2014 is proper, cute and unrealistic based on any historical evidence. I know it, you know it and if ever injected with Sodium Pentothal, Whitman knows this too. And yet, Monday’s announcement means he’s still succeeding to a certain degree of Jedi mind-tricking folks into believing Illini football matters.
“I do think (the game in Dublin) will have that (bowl game) kind of a feel to it,” Whitman said. “The national stage of playing in week zero is significant. All eyes of the college football world will be on us in that weekend."
When seeing the situation in any form of reality, Whitman had no leverage to negotiate his program to be involved in such an event. Illini football doesn’t deserve this overseas trip. The football program doesn’t deserve this Week Zero and likely national television stage. And yet, there Whitman was providing Illinois football with exactly that with the help of the Aer Lingus airlines and other sponsors bankrolling such an experience.
Whitman found a way for a liferaft to be thrown to the Illini when the more likely result to the downtrodden swimming the waters of Power 5 Conference football is usually an anvil. Was Illinois likely to sell out tickets for a home game on November 13, 2021? No. And yet, Aer Lingus is providing Whitman’s department with that kind of money guarantee. In the ‘Let's Make A Deal’ world of college athletics, Whitman chose door number two with the guarantee he can’t get left with a goat.
Whitman would obviously love for the Illini football program to turn a corner toward consistent winning ways. He wants to see Illinois do exactly what current head coach Lovie Smith has continued to press with the media and be a more confident, more successful and more popular brand among what is the university athletics' largest revenue-producing activity. If all that ever happens, national television networks and corporate sponsors flock toward you for season-opening neutral site games. If Illinois ever gets there again, bowl representatives will be in Memorial Stadium to scout the home team instead of the road opponent (go ahead and make the joke about the Rose Bowl committee folks being at last weekend’s Michigan-Illinois game) and in due time your players get lifelong worthwhile experiences that coaches sell on the recruiting trail. Whitman pulled off that last result for a football program with a 28-63 record since 2012 that includes an internal investigation in 2015 that resulted in the termination of a head coach who constantly embarrassed the public image of the athletics department from day one.
FACT: These types of football programs don’t get overseas trips.
FACT: These football programs aren’t given the opportunity to trade a November home game in cold Champaign where likely only 20-40,000 folks attend for a European trip in August concluding in a national television spotlight.
Illinois will play Nebraska in Dublin, Ireland to open the 2021 football season.
Of course, it would be easy to be cynical about most Illini fans not being thrilled about this. Yes, the prospect of shelling out between $2,000-$5,000 to watch Illinois play an opponent they’ve only beaten once since 1924 is somewhat laughable. It would be a near cliche move to suggest this trip to Ireland as the most blatant and strangest coddling move toward the state’s biggest market (Chicago) that the U of I desperately wants to find a foothold in. Certainly the opposite side argument of getting a national television platform is as some would say “having the whole neighborhood seeing your trash strewn out on the lawn”. It may not even be derisive to wonder A) who’ll be the Illini’s head coach in this 2021 season opener? and/or B) will he be making his debut as the Illini coach over 3,600 miles away from the Champaign campus?
And all of those previous cynicism items may have a level of truth. At the same time, it is also true that Whitman continues to prop up the athletics at his alma mater when they’ve done nothing to deserve it. That is, by definition, what we call a politician. If Monday proved nothing else, this Dublin game symbolized Whitman’s ability to haggle without many needed bargaining chips.