Illinois State head coach Brock Spack is “on the cusp” of returning Illinois State to the FCS national championship game, which his Redbirds earned a trip to 11 years ago. (Photo by GoRedbirds.com)
By Dan Verdun
Eleven years ago, Illinois State came within 38 seconds of an FCS national championship, only to see North Dakota State quarterback Carson Wentz pull that magic carpet out from under the Redbirds with a late touchdown dash.
Just over a decade later, Brock Spack still has one clear mission.
“My only goal was to get back there and win the national championship,” the 17th-year ISU head coach told Prairie State Pigskin. “When you taste it, that’s exhilarating. We were so close and didn’t get it done.”
Standing in Illinois State’s way of advancing to the national title game is No. 12-seed Villanova, which will host the Redbirds at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in an FCS semifinal.
The winner advances to the Jan. 5 title game at First Bank Stadium on the Vanderbilt campus in Nashville. Rivals Montana and Montana State square off in the other semifinal.
“It’s taken us a long time to get in position to get back there. Probably longer than I thought it would,” Spack said.
Spack, a Rockford native, has talked numerous times about the potential of his 2020 Redbirds.
“We had a great team here in ‘20, but never played (due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Who knows what they would have done,” he said. “We had to retool our program a little bit and now we’re on the cusp.”
Past influences
Spack played linebacker at Purdue in the early 1980s where he met Boilermaker assistant coaches Bob Spoo and Joe Tiller. When Spoo – a Chicago native – was hired as Eastern Illinois head coach in 1987, he invited Spack to join his inaugural staff.
Spack spent four seasons at EIU, where he earned a master’s degree and learned from Spoo.
“He was very disciplined when it comes to time management,” Spack said. “I learned a lot from him.”
Tiller was Purdue’s defensive coordinator for Spack’s senior season in 1983. Spack spent the 1984 and ‘85 seasons as a graduate assistant at his alma mater before a season as an assistant at Division III Wabash (Ind.) College.
After a stint coaching defensive backs at Purdue (1991-94), Spack served as Tiller’s defensive coordinator at Wyoming for two seasons (1995-96). When Tiller was hired as Purdue’s head coach in 1997, he brought Spack along to run the Boilermaker defense for the next 12 seasons.
“Coach Tiller was really good with personnel and personnel management,” Spack said. “He was really good with timing. He used to talk about how everything in life was about timing.”
The time for Spack to become a head coach came in 2009 when Illinois State hired him. Spack said that while he took lessons and traits from both Spoo and Tiller, he’s evolved into his own persona.
“Experience trumps knowledge sometimes. That’s what those two guys had. You lean on their experience and learn from it and add a little bit of your own. You put it all together and you go,” Spack said.
Now the dean of the Missouri Valley Football Conference, as well as ISU’s all-time winningest coach, it’s Spack who shares his philosophies.
“While we still have the real physical practices, I’ve learned how to scale back and get the kids who are banged up (ready for) the games later in the season,” he said. “Now that we’re in the tournament, we have a system that we tweak a little bit every year. It’s minor stuff, nothing major, but you learn.
“It’s a long season. It’s almost an NFL schedule these days.”
Dan Verdun is a co-founder of Prairie State Pigskin. He has written four books: NIU Huskies Football, EIU Panthers Football, ISU Redbirds Football and SIU Salukis Football.
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