Making the morning rounds.
• Good luck, Rocket man. The envelope is in at Illinois, and the name inside is Tim Beckman, 46, who arrives from Toledo to replace the perennially embattled Ron Zook. Beckman has brief Big Ten experience (he was Ohio State's cornerbacks coach in 2005 and 2006), and his first head coaching gig has yielded a winning record over three years, including a 15-6 mark in MAC games. And, well, that's pretty much it.
Yes, the usual critics of tepid Big Ten coaching hires are firing up their keyboards as we speak: Prior to Urban Meyer's return to Ohio State, the only new coach in the conference with any notable reputation preceding him over the last decade is Rich Rodriguez at Michigan. (Unless you count Zook himself, whose reputation after three years at Florida was one Illinois wanted to play down.) In this case, though, first-year athletic director Mike Thomas only turned to Beckman after being turned down by at least two of his top targets, Houston's Kevin Sumlin and Cincinnati's Butch Jones. And frankly, he was faced with kind of a tough sell: Including Zook, Illinois has fired three consecutive head coaches over the last 20 years, and only two coaches since 1958 (Mike White and John Mackovic in the eighties) have left Champaign with winning records. [Chicago Sun Times]
• Eh, I coulda done that. Speaking of Rodriguez: Asked earlier this week if he would have matched Brady Hoke's 10-win debut if he'd been granted a fourth year at Michigan, Rodriguez didn't hesitate to tell a Grand Rapids, Mich., radio station that yes, in fact, he would have. At least.
"That's being confident and a lot of things going the right way, and certainly we had to make a few changes, needed alterations and had to play better defensively," Rodriguez said from his new home in Arizona. "They've done a terrific job. You've got to give their coaches a lot of credit, but it's just frustrating for me to watch them at times, because those are all my guys. I'm happy for them. To see your kids be happy — I think that's the ultimate goal in life, isn't it?" [Detroit News]
• RIP BCS AQ. The ball is rolling downhill toward a "Plus One" — that is, a Final Four format that power brokers don't want to call a playoff — but the next major BCS reform is clear enough: The death of "Automatic Qualifier" status for certain conferences. The pursuit of an automatic bid (and the big payday that comes with it) has been a driving force in conference realignment, especially in the Big East and Mountain West, but the elimination of automatic bids altogether could reduce the BCS' mission to determining a champion via the 1 vs. 2 matchup or the Plus-One model set to replace it.
"Some of the people that don't have [AQ status], say they don't want it," said Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany at Thursday's IMG Forum in New York. "Some of the people that do have it, don't really care about it. Maybe it needs to be reconsidered. I'm not wed to it. I'm wed to the 1-2 game and I'm wed to the Rose Bowl. I'm not wed to the selection process or the limitations." [Yahoo! Sports, CBS Sports]
• We're moving in more of a non-walrus direction. Urban Meyer has his first major hire at Ohio State: Tom Herman, a 36-year-old spread offense guru fresh from a three-year stint as offensive coordinator at Iowa State, who has already been spotted on campus with OSU quarterback Braxton Miller. Herman could be in line to become Meyer's O.C. or quarterbacks coach, both of which will be wide open with the departure of longtime Jim Tressel staffers Jim Bollman and Nick Siciliano. (By the way, if either one needs a ride to the airport, the offers still stands from every Buckeye fan alive.) [Columbus Dispatch]
Quickly… Southern Miss athletic director Richard Giannini is expected to step down by the end of the week, in the middle of a coaching search. … Mark Richt is the subject of the weirdest coaching rumor of the silly season. … Jim Leavitt gets a nice letter of recommendation for the Arizona State job. … South Florida loses its third 2012 commitment in less than a month. … The most confusing headline ever involving Army football. … And while the Honey Badger doesn't care, LSU's compliance department most certainly does.
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Matt Hinton is on Facebook and Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.