Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman hit on a variety of different talking points (Illini men’s basketball success, Memorial Stadium upgrades, the Ubben Basketball Complex project) during his annual gathering with local media earlier this week. Before the Big Ten shook up the college sports world with the addition of Southern California and UCLA. Here’s a
sampling of some other ground Whitman covered during his two-hour discussion:
Football supportWhitman made even more of a financial commitment to Bret Bielema both during and after his first season as Illinois football coach. That included a contract extension and raise that made defensive coordinator Ryan Walters a $1 million man and a similar move financially to fire offensive coordinator Tony Petersen, buy out his contract and hire Barry Lunney Jr. in his place.
Then came new turf for Zuppke Field at Memorial Stadium and an investment in new helmets and shoulder pads. Neither was budgeted for fiscal year 2021. Both still happened this offseason.
“We brought Bret here to lead the strategic direction of our football program,” Whitman said. “We brought him here to build a winning football program and to tell us what he needed to in order for it to get to that point. As a first-year head coach, if he were to come to me and say, ‘Hey, I need $1 million in order to change this part of our program that’s going to make a transformative difference,’ I probably wouldn’t have been what I promised him I would be, which is a supportive athletic director, if I hadn’t greenlighted that move.”
College Football Playoff expansionThe idea of an expanded CFP has become a primary talking point for the sport. No idea on just how to do it, though, has generated consensus support.
“I am in favor of expansion,” Whitman said. “I think greater access to the playoff is a good thing for college football. I agree that there are a number of logistical details that have yet to be answered satisfactorily.”
Whitman’s list of questions about an expanded CFP is lengthy. It includes how big the playoff field will be and which teams stand to gain access, how many total games will be played and the ensuing overlap with the academic calendar and how the bowl system is managed.
“I think a bigger field makes sense,” Whitman said, “but I think there are a lot of unanswered questions that ultimately need to be resolved before we figure out the when and the how.”
Name, image and likenessThe first year of NIL opportunities generated more than 400 transactions by 150 Illinois athletes from all 21 sports. Half of those transactions involved men’s basketball and football athletes. Female athletes accounted for 35 percent of the 400 transactions.
Whitman said he was pleased with where Illinois stands on the NIL front. That the department had been progressive to stay on the cutting edge. He also acknowledge there was room for growth in what’s been an ever-changing NIL landscape.
“I think we still very much remain in a testing phase,” Whitman said. “It feels like there’s a lot of testing of the boundaries trying to figure out what the rules of the road are. A lot of the things we anticipated would be challenges have been challenges.
“We have a patchwork of state laws that all have some differing levels of engagement and restriction. We have a federal government that hasn’t chosen to get involved. We have an NCAA that I think, in part with the Alston decision, is a little uneasy to assert itself to directly. As a result, we have a set of rules that essentially amount to posted speed limits, but there aren’t a lot of cops on the road.”
Future for hockeyIllinois officially ended its five-year pursuit of a Division I hockey program in May, with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic making it not financially feasible. Whitman wanted to greenlight the project after the expenditure of significant time, effort and resources, but the continued costs didn’t make that possible.
That doesn’t mean Illinois won’t revisit adding hockey in the future. Costs that jumped 30 percent because of the pandemic coming down would be a start. The Illini finding their own Terry Pegula, who essentially financed Penn State adding hockey by himself, wouldn’t hurt either.
“I do think some of the variables are still very much there,” Whitman said. “We now have an aggregation of land on the south edge of downtown Champaign that still needs a solution. We still have an aging ice hockey facility at the University of Illinois that needs a solution. We still have Huff Hall that presents some challenges and needs a solution. The downtown arena addressed a lot of those things. On some reasonable level, some of those unsolved riddles still sort of point in that direction, but we don’t, right now, have any energy behind trying to make that solution work.”
Keeping IHSA football in ChampaignThe IHSA boys’ basketball state tournament returned to Champaign in 2022 after nearly three decades away. Keeping IHSA state football, which Illinois hosted every year from 1999 through 2012 and then every other year since, is now the goal.
The IHSA put the 2023-27 state title games up for bid with a request of a single host. That creates an issue for Illinois given its regular season finale with Northwestern that is at Memorial Stadium every other year, but it wasn’t a deterrent for submitting a bid.
“There’s been some discussion, I know, around some of the IHSA guidelines — things that they put in their request for proposals,” Whitman said. “We’ve had some discussions with the leadership at the IHSA. We will submit a bid. We’ll put our best foot forward. We do recognize we have some limitations with our competitive football schedule with Northwestern, but it’s an event we’ve had here for a really long time and something we hope can continue.”
