Mike Cagley, Co-Host Sports Spectacular & Big Sports Radio

September 6, 2024

We’re done with week one of the college football season. And what a weekend it was. There’s no reason to take week one as the indelible future, but it certainly starts to pull the curtain back where we can begin to assess where this year’s teams will land from a success standpoint.

Let’s look at some of the things that piqued my curiosity this week!

Hail Mary #1 – Illinois Runs into Kansas

Bret Bielema must be happy with the shutout that his Illini pitched against the Eastern Illinois Panthers last week. This doesn’t mean the Illini are bowl bound, but it portends the team being a stronger team than many anticipated prior to the opening season kickoff.

This week the Illini will face Top 25 ranked Kansas as the Jayhawks come to town in what my IlliniGuys colleague Matt Stevens as called “the Biggest Game of Bret Bielema’s Illini Tenure.” I am not sure I go that far, but the Illini are faced by a team that drubbed them last year. Jalon Daniels and his high-powered offense comes to town coached by Lance Liepold the alleged “second choice” of Josh Whitman to coach the Illini after Bret Bielema.

In my eyes, the Illini do not have to win this game. No game is a must win (except maybe Florida’s) at the game two point of a team’s schedule. But the Illini need to be competitive – something they weren’t in Lawrence last year – to win the confidence of fans and the team as well.

To me it is much more important for the Illini to win games that they should win on the schedule – such as Purdue and Michigan State. Defeating teams like this will prevent the letdown that happened two years ago when the Illini lost to Indiana, Purdue and Michigan State. Those losses prevented an appearance in the Big Ten championship game. Last year, the Illini lost to Purdue, Nebraska, and Northwestern. Any one of those games goes the way of the Illini and they make it to a bowl game for back-to-back seasons.

The Illini need a win or a good show to build confidence for the new Big Ten and their schedule features 4 top 25 ranked teams. To keep the fans happy – a win would be invaluable.

Hail Mary #2 – Finebaum vs Kelly

Brian Kelly is one of my least favorite football coaches out there. It goes back to the videographer who died in the scissor lift recording practice during a storm with 40 mph winds back in 2010. That said, I saw where Paul Finebaum was angry that Kelly didn’t show emotion early enough and didn’t want to hear Kelly say, “I need to do a better job coaching.” That is all fine and good. Then Finebaum hit the trigger the fanbase button and said, “you’re paid $11 million dollars to do the coaching in the game and throughout the game”.

This appears to be a lazy click bait move by Finebaum. Some might say he’s paid an estimated $5 million a year to create a more coherent argument. Trying to trigger fans against a coach (or player) just for making more money is a cheap move, but sadly it seems to work “fine” – so this type of click bait puts the “fine” in Finebaum.

The fact is that Brian Kelly is an above average coach on the field. At Notre Dame there have been 10 seasons with double digit wins since Lou Holtz left after the 1996 season. Kelly has 7 of those 10 double digit win seasons. Willingham had one, as did Weis and Freeman. But he was never able to get the Irish over the top to win a national title. In my book, he’s not a great coach.

Now that he’s in the SEC and while Saban has retired, the league has picked up Texas and Oklahoma, it’s going to be a challenge to win the SEC title. Maybe he will keep the team in a position to make the 12-team playoff and win a game in the CFP tournament. Until he wins it all, he’s not great. And coaches who are not great have nights like LSU had against USC.

His salary has nothing to do with it. Unless you want to stir up folks against him and get some clicks. Paul can do better than such an argument. And that my friends has nothing to do with how much money a year Paul makes.

Hail Mary #3 – Penn State’s Offensive Coordinator May Be the Next Big Time Head Coach

Drew Allar is a quarterback that has left most thinking that tomorrow will be better than today. Last season, he showed glimpses of his potential but struggled mightily against the two titans of the Big Ten, Ohio State and Michigan – having a quarterback rating of 88.9 and 87.2 against that duo. There’s no sin in that – but the Nittany Lions need more if they’re to successfully navigate their schedule in the new 18-team Big Ten.

Ironically, if Allar improves, Penn State is fortunate enough to miss both Michigan and Oregon on this schedule leaving only Ohio State and USC of the teams that were so formidable last season. They also face Washington but with Kalen DeBoer leaving that team is a wild card as to how strong they will be in this the inaugural season of the new Big Ten.

Enter Andy Kotelnicki (Co-Till-Nicki) as the new Nittany Lion offensive coordinator. He comes from a successful three-year stint at Kansas under Lance Liepold. Under Kotelnicki Kansas has had a formidable offense racking up the following accomplishments in the past 3 years:

• 11^th nationally in 15+ yard pass plays
• 12^th nationally in 20+ yard plays
• 15^th nationally in 30+ yard plays
• 11^th nationally in 40+ yard plays
• 9 times scored 40+ points
• 5 times scored 50+ points

He has coached Jalon Daniels and his backup Jason Bean at Kansas. One wonders how much better those numbers could be if Daniels had been healthy all 3 seasons – he only played in 12 games the last two seasons – despite racking up impressive statistics.

At Buffalo, he coached the best offenses in school history.

Prior to his years at Buffalo, he was at Wisconsin Whitewater where he was 30-0 as the offensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator. Oh yeah, and they won 2 national championships.

It’s early in the season, but Drew Allar had his best game ever against West Virginia where he went 11 – 17 for 216 yards, threw for 3 TDs and rushed 6 times for 44 yards and a 229.7 rating and a QBR of 98.3. Both were career highs.

If Drew Allar improves throughout the season, this Penn State team may make more noise than many thought they would. It’s way too early to jump to conclusions (it’s just one game after all). But if Drew Allar improves and the Penn State team is more successful, Andy Kotelnicki would be one of my highest recommended candidates for a head coaching position. He’s worked for years under Lance Liepold and clearly understands how to move the ball and score in today’s freewheeling college football environment.