Karma's Bite

Lovie Smith spent nine years as head coach of the Bears, going 81-63, with one (losing) Super Bowl appearance.  Smith was some combination of a defensive genius and lucky guy who had Brian Urlacher, Lance Briggs and Charles Tillman to implement his defensive schemes.  In two years at Tampa Bay, Smith went 8-24.  That’s what happens when you don’t have Urlacher and friends to play the defense you want.

I may have been in the vanguard of Lovie-haters.  I disliked his constant smirk, his John Fox approach to the media—something the McCaskeys must look for in a coach—and his dislike of offense (another McCaskey prereq until Matt Nagy).  God forbid the Bears had the ball on their 35 with a minute to go in the first half and two timeouts left.  You knew they were going to run the ball up the middle and not bother taking a timeout.

For reasons best known to its athletic department, the University of Illinois named Smith its head football coach in 2016.  With one game left (Northwestern, which could mean another slaughter), the Fighting Illini have amassed an 8-24 record under Smith, which happens when you don’t recruit the necessary talent (see Northwestern).  How bad has Smith’s team been this year?  Well, they lost to Iowa 63-0, on Senior Day, no less, a week after they lost 54-35 to Nebraska.  Why mention the 63-33 beat-down by Maryland or the 49-20 one to Wisconsin or the 46-7 one to Purdue?

The moral of the story here is, he who smirks last smirks best.  And you should see the look on my face now.