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TheMichiganDaily, www.michigandaily.com
Behind Enemy Lines: Lovie Smith
As one of the rare football
coaches who has had success at
both the college and professional
level,
Michigan
coach
Jim
Harbaugh finds himself at the
center of two worlds. Everything
he does at Michigan seems to
cause a media circus, but at the
same time, pundits continue to
speculate that he might eventually
return to the NFL in search of a
Super Bowl ring.
With all the attention Harbaugh
has gotten, it’s easy to forget that
he’s not the only coach in the Big
Ten who has willingly left the
NFL behind to take a job at the
college level.
Illinois
coach
Lovie
Smith
hadn’t coached a college team in
over 20 years, since he was the
defensive backs coach at Ohio
State during the 1995 season. The
12-year NFL head coach who
led the Chicago Bears to Super
Bowl XLI and the 2010 NFC
Championship game turned a lot
of heads when he accepted the
Fighting Illini’s head coaching job
in March. Just two months earlier,
he had been fired by the Tampa
Bay Buccaneers despite coaching
just two seasons there and the
team appearing to be on the rise.
While the hire excited many
Illinois fans, a turnaround won’t
be easy — the Fighting Illini are
just 2-4 so far this season, and they
haven’t had a winning regular
season since 2007. Still, there is
hope in Champaign that a coach
with Smith’s experience might be
exactly what the program needs.
The Daily caught up with Smith
in July at Big Ten
Media
Days
in
Chicago,
where
he
addressed
reporters
about
returning to his
old home state and
readjusting to the
college level.
Question: You
spent many years
here in Chicago
and had a lot of
success with the
Bears. What’s it like to be back in
Chicago?
Lovie Smith: We, of course,
feel like we’re coming home. My
wife is from Chicago. We have two
sons that live here. When you’re
placed in the coaching profession
— and I see (Iowa coach) Kirk
Ferentz over there, Kirk’s been
18 years at one place, that doesn’t
happen
most
times. For an NFL
team, to be there
nine years, that’s
quite a bit. When
you’re in a great
city like Chicago
nine
years,
you
love
everything
about it, and that’s
how we feel. We
kept a place here,
we kept a home
here throughout.
So that transition has gone fairly
well.
Q: When you take the step
from the NFL back to the college
ranks — you talked about teaching
the
fundamentals
still
being
important to you — do you have
to step back a little bit from a
complexity
standpoint
when
you’re coaching younger players?
LS: I feel like, even in the NFL,
we were running a college-type
program anyway. We put a big
emphasis on fundamentals there.
Defensively, we don’t have a
complex system. I don’t think you
play good defense based on trying
to, you know, ‘I’m smarter than the
guy across every play, and I have
to call the perfect defense every
time.’ We relied on athletic ability,
putting guys in position to make
plays. So I don’t feel like we’ve had
to compromise what we did at that
next level for what we’re gonna do
right now. That doesn’t change an
awful lot.
And the good coaches I’ve been
around, as I left Ohio State and
went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
way back in the day, that’s what
I got from Tony Dungy. He said,
‘Lovie, there’s not a big difference
between college and NFL. We’re
gonna start our
practices,
early
on we’re gonna
teach
tackling,
teach
stance,
alignments and
all those things,
just
like
you
did.’ So I don’t
see it being a big
adjustment at all.
Q: How much
has the style of
practice changed
between when you first started
coaching in college and today?
LS: There was a lot more
contact back then, I would say.
Now you kind of realize that you
can’t have as much, and you have
some marquee players that — you
just can’t put them at risk. I just
don’t think you have to go out
and scrimmage every day. I think
you can get in
position and not
have to throw
your
running
backs
down
on the ground.
I
don’t
think
you have to, in
practice, tackle
a quarterback to
know how to do
it. That’s what
drills
are
for.
I’m a boxing fan
— they’re not going in and going 15
rounds every day. You spar, a lot.
And that’s what you have to do to
win our game.
Former Chicago Bears, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach is now 2-4 in first season in Champaign
COURTESY OF THE DAILY ILLINI
Lovie Smith is in the first year of a rebuilding project at Illinois, starting 2-4 this year after the program finished with a combined 17-32 record in the previous four seasons.
JACOB GASE
Daily Sports Editor
“We, of course,
feel like
we’re coming
home.”
“I just don’t think
you have to go out
and scrimmage
every day.”