In little more than an overnight span, positive expectations — hope, realistic or otherwise — swept away rank pessimism among Illini football fans.
For those who fumed that the UI administration didn’t care about sports, the March 7 arrival of coach Lovie Smith verified a fresh attitude, a full commitment.
In the face of a university-wide financial crunch forcing departments to scrimp, the DIA handed Smith a $21 million, six-year contract bubbling with incentives, and boosted the pay of staff assistants from $2.4 million to roughly $4 million.
Illinois is clearly all-in with Lovie.
And in a collegiate world in which athletic directors lose their jobs when their football hires fail, new AD Josh Whitman has earned a long-term honeymoon regardless of how this turns out.