Mike Babcock’s Relentless Pursuit
By Grant Riggs, Editor-in-Chief
On Wednesday, February 1, at 6:30 a.m., Mike Babcock, 5th-year head football coach at McKendree University, walked into his office knowing the next five hours would determine the future of his program. The occasion? A day that would bring about the culmination of months of hard work - National Signing Day.
For Babcock and his nine-man coaching staff, the current day's work began at 7 a.m., when high school seniors started faxing in their National Letters of Intent (NLI) to play football for McKendree. The preparation for this one day, however, required a countless amount of hours. “It’s not 8 to 5” Babcock said, “A lot of times, you’ll be up at 4:30 a.m. to be at a school at 7:30 a.m. because that’s the only time to talk to a kid. It’s a lot of hours for al...






