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Nearly all of them have busy schedules these days.
All of them made a mark or are still making a mark in the NFL, too. In a variety of ways.
Sean Payton, Mike Shanahan, Tony Romo and Jimmy Garoppolo all have one east central Illinois town in common, too, besides their contributions to pro football: Charleston.
Eastern Illinois University makes up the main portion of the Coles County community that is nestled off Interstate 57 roughly 45 minutes or so south of Champaign. And it’s where the aforementioned quartet first made a name for themselves.
Well before Shanahan won two Super Bowls with the Denver Broncos in the late 1990s, well before Payton won a Super Bowl with the New Orleans Saints in 2010, well before Romo became the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys and lead CBS analyst and well before Garoppolo started a Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers in 2020, they all carried one important title in Charleston: Eastern Illinois quarterback.
And they did it as well as anyone who’s ever worn the Panthers blue and white colors. Garoppolo is first in school history with 13,156 passing yards, Payton is second with 10,566 passing yards and Romo is third with 8,212 passing yards. Shanahan hoped to accumulate those numbers when he arrived at EIU in the early 1970s, but a severe kidney injury derailed his playing career yet propelled his successful coaching career.
“Those four are the Mount Rushmore of EIU football,” Eastern Illinois athletic director Tom Michael said.
And all four returned to Charleston this past weekend for two days of events, topped by this past Saturday’s Evening with Champions fundraiser at Groniger Arena. For the first time in the life of the 71-year-old Shanahan, the 60-year-old Payton, the 44-year-old Romo and the 32-year-old Garoppolo, they were all together at once.
“They joked they could do a reality show in the bed and breakfast we had rented out for them that weekend,” Michael said. “It was just those four guys. Wives didn’t come. I think there was a true enthusiasm about those four guys being able to be together for a weekend. It was a phenomenal weekend all around.”
It was the first time Michael, a former Illinois men’s basketball player and Illinois athletic administrator before becoming the EIU athletic director in 2014, had met Garoppolo, too. Garoppolo’s last season at EIU was in 2013 when he won the Walter Payton Award, the FCS equivalent of the Heisman Trophy, before embarking upon what is now his 11th season in the NFL when he begins the 2024 season with the Los Angles Rams.
“You’ve got some incredible personalities there, particularly with Sean and Tony,” Michael said. “We started this on Friday morning, where they met with our team and our football staff. We had some events down in Effingham on Friday and Saturday. We had a full day with them. As each event went, Jimmy got a lot more comfortable with everything.”
Michael didn’t have to worry about Payton and Romo not putting on a show for the crowd of 400 EIU supporters and donors on Saturday night.
“When they were on the stage as a panel, there’s absolutely a little bit of a struggle about who the alpha is between Sean and Tony,” Michael said with a laugh. “They both enjoy the microphone, that’s for sure.”
Shanahan, Payton, Romo and Garoppolo all represent different eras of EIU football. The Panthers won a Division II national title in 1978 with Shanahan serving as offensive coordinator for coach Darrell Mudra, reached the I-AA quarterfinals in 1986 with Payton as the quarterback for coach Al Molde, made three straight I-AA playoff appearances from 2000-02 with Romo playing for coach Bob Spoo and advanced to the FCS quarterfinals in 2013 with Garoppolo throwing for an EIU single-season record 5,050 yards under coach Dino Babers.
“You could tell there was joy with them coming back and with them being at their alma mater again,” Michael said. “You could tell what this place did for them and their careers and their lives and families’ lives. Charleston hasn’t changed in a lot of ways for them.”
Illinois will become familiar with the latest version of EIU football in a few months when the Panthers visit Memorial Stadium in Champaign for the season opener at 8 p.m. on Aug. 29. EIU just missed out on an FCS playoff berth last season, but finished 8-3 in coach Chris Wilkerson’s second season in what was the program’s first winning season since 2017.
“They were really pleased with the state of what we’re trying to do and the direction we want to take the football program,” Michael said. “They’ve bought into that aspect of how do we continue to move the needle to get more competitive and remain competitive? As I refer to it, it’s their program. Just being able to do that is really important to them.”
And who knows when Shanahan, Payton, Romo or Garoppolo will get together in the same place at the same time again. For it to happen in Charleston, of all places, isn’t lost on Michael.
“Our folks, donors, fans, the people that support our program, really stepped up and embraced this opportunity,” Michael said. “It’s the biggest event that’s happened on our campus, and it was a really good event for the entire athletic department and university.”
Football mattersEIU will try to do something in late August no FCS opponent has done against Illinois in 18 such games.
Beat the Illini. Illinois is a perfect 18-0 when playing an FCS foe. Two of those wins in Champaign have happened against the Panthers, with Illinois winning 42-17 in the 2006 season opener and 47-21 in the 2008 season opener.
The game this season against the Panthers is only the second FCS opponent Illinois will have played in the Bret Bielema era, with the Illini beating Chattanooga 31-0 in the 2022 season in the only other matchup with an FCS team in Bielema’s first three seasons.
The game against Illinois is one of two FBS opponents the Panthers will play this season, with EIU playing at Northwestern two weeks later on Sept. 14.
“The mantra in our football program is brick by brick. You know you can’t lay the next brick if that first row isn’t good,” Michael said. “If we ignore what got us there last year — and Chris has done an unbelievable job putting the program in a great place — it can quickly become something that’s not good. You don’t want to be a one-year wonder and now we’re back with losing seasons. We’ve got to remember who we are and what’s got us where we need to be.”
Michael was appreciative of the fact Illinois scheduled EIU for the first time in 16 football seasons, with both school’s men’s basketball teams opening the past two seasons against one another at State Farm Center in Champaign.
“I’m grateful because I could go somewhere else and play a basketball game, and it’s going to cost me,” Michael said. “We play the guarantee games for revenue. It’s a lot more affordable, and the return for us is greater if we can eat our pregame meal here, go up the road an hour and hopefully compete to make it a great experience for everybody.”
Money mattersThe ever-evolving world of college athletics will soon enter a realm of revenue-sharing thanks to a recent NCAA settlement that will see the NCAA pay nearly $2.8 billion in damages over 10 years to nearly 14,000 athletes from 2016 to present day. To go along with that, this new format will see schools use up to $21 million a year to pay college athletes in any sport starting in 2025.
Details are scant at the moment, but this decision will have large ramifications on an athletic department like EIU.
“The biggest disappointment for us was how it all came down,” Michael said. “We didn’t have any input as the settlement was being negotiated with the NCAA. The Power Four conferences, they were in those negotiations, but yet, we’re going to be hit with a pretty significant number over a 10-year period at least for us and our budget to where some real hard decisions are going to have be to made to how do we make that money up?”
Fundraisers, like the one EIU just had, will help. But only to an extent.
“It’s frustrating to me when people say, ‘Well, just go out and fundraise it,’” Michael said. “I’m going out and fundraising everything else, too, to try and make that work. It is going to be impactful for a $13-14 million budget, like we have at EIU. We don’t have a $100-million plus budget that most of the Power Four institutions have. So where does that leave kids I’m trying to recruit here at Eastern Illinois? If there’s not going to be scholarship limits, if it’s just going to be roster limits, what impact does that have? I’ve got to think about that scenario.”
Michael hopes the future involving college athletics doesn’t dive into an employee and employer relationship between the schools and the athletes. But it’s anyone’s guess about what the next few years will bring.
“The value of the education (should) still the driving force of what we do to provide opportunities for individuals to participate in a sport that’s going to better their lives, whether it’s professionally or through the degree program that they’ve earned at each respective institution,” Michael said. “That’s the value of what, I think, intercollegiate athletics should be, but it certainly has turned into something very much more that it appears, and that’s it pay for play.
“It’s unrestricted free agency without contracts or a salary cap. I’m not sure that’s really where college athletics should be, but we have to embrace the change and we’ve got to figure out how it works best for all of us at our institutions.”
Coaching mattersThe EIU women’s basketball program will have a new coach leading the program in the 2024-25 season with former Illinois coach Matt Bollant recently leaving his position with the Panthers to become the coach — again — at Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn. Bryan is an NAIA institution where Bollant first became a head coach in 2002.
He leaves EIU with a 96-112 record after seven seasons.
The Panthers, who finished 15-18 last season and reached the Ohio Valley Conference tournament semifinals after tying for second place in the regular season, will have an interim coach in Marqus McGlothan for the upcoming season. McGlothan served as an assistant coach the past two seasons under Bollant.
“Timing wasn’t ideal for that, but probably most of us would say that timing for coaching searches is never ideal,” Michael said. “Again, with the timing and portal situations, we felt like that would give us the best opportunity to give Marcus an opportunity to coach and keep our roster in place. We feel we have a pretty good situation coming back, and in the spring (of 2025), we would do the formal search and put that in place.”
Matt Daniels is the sports editor at The News-Gazette. He can be reached at 217-373-7422 or at mdaniels@news-gazette.com.
