How ’bout those Illini?
November 10th, 2007I was thrilled to see Illinois knock off Ohio State today. Ron Zook has certainly turned the Illini football program around, and I’m hopeful about the team’s future.
Right now I think I’m most interested in seeing an Oregon-LSU national championship game.
Tomorrow I’m off to East Tennessee for a few days for the Tennessee Baptist Convention, so blogging will most likely be light until the end of the week. If you’re going to be in Kingsport for the meeting, let me know.
It was a great game. Nice to get excited about Illini football since that’s about all we have around here to be excited about (Bulls, Bears, Blah!).
One step closer to Illinois vs. Florida in Orlando, in whatever bowl is held there. So Gator fans…Zook is a bum, right? Well, he’s OUR bum, and we’ll take him, thank you very much.
Hmm, didn’t Missouri beat Illinois? Fight, Tigers, fight for Ol’ Mizzou …!
I don’t watch too many college football games, but I managed to see quite a bit of this one. The Illini looked like a real football team! (Wonder if they could beat the St. Louis Ramlets?!)
: )
I speak from experience when I say that Zook is great at winning the occasional big game, but never producing any consistency. I guess that is good enough for the fighting Ililini, but it didn’t fly down here.
Considering that Illinois has never been considered big time football (except maybe for the early and mid 80’s), yes Paul S., so far that is good enough.
Besides, the first person to replace “the ol ball coach” would have been run out of town anyway; it just so happens it was Coach Zook. I trust that Coach Meyer is meeting your expectations.
OSU was overrated at number 1. LSU will be hard to beat down the stretch. I was also glad to see Illinois win I had a feeling they would pull of the upset.
Is there any chance that Illinois could face Florida in a bowl? That would be a classic.
Bob,
Just don’t hold your breathe waiting for Zook to take it to the next level. He did take a lot of heat for being “the next guy.” However, he still got a fair chance. He could not win the games against our biggest rivals, and he made some of the dumbest mistakes I have ever seen in bowls games (i..e. double reverse wide receiver pass to the QB with 1:30 left in the Outback bowl). Had he done what Urban is doing now (mainly betaing our rivals), then he would not have been run out of town.
And Joel, I would hate to see and Illinois vs. UF bowl game. It would be nice to have more of a challenge in a bowl game than we get in our spring blue and orange game
LSU is a tough team, but they’ve looked susceptible in past weeks and they might have to face a red-hot Georgia team in the SEC tourney. The 3 Big 12 teams look tough, but they’ll likely have to face each other before the end.
My crazy Championship prediction: Oregon v. Oklahoma for a rematch of the Instant Replay debacle a couple of seasons ago.
I will say that overall, Illini football is not the religion that it is in Gainesville, or FLA in general, or other parts of the country. We are enjoying our current 8-3 mark; however, the QB must really continue to improve. Outside of the 4 TD passes against OSU, he is really more of a (dare I make this comparison!!!) Michael Vick type…….run first, pass if necessary.
…and my ‘Horns might just sneak into a BCS game as an at-large.
Have to love a program in which a rebuilding year means at least 9 wins.
Laz,
Playing in the Big 12 always helps with those rebuilding years. It must be nice
Paul, I’m not sure the issue for firing Ron Zook was because “he couldn’t beat our rivals.” True he was only 1-2 against Florida State and Tennessee, but he was also 2-1 against Florida’s biggest rival, Georgia. And remember, he did something Steve Spurrier couldn’t do: beat Florida State in Tallahassee. Zook was pretty good against big opponents. Few remember that he handed LSU their only loss in the National Championship season. The problem was he lost to teams that weren’t good. What good is it beating the National Champion if you can’t beat a 1-5 Mississippi State team in Gainesville? That Mississippi State loss at Florida Field sealed his fate.
You are so right that he got his fair chance. It’s just with all the talent he had, his teams underperformed. Five losses for three straight seasons is totally unacceptable in Gainesville.
Here’s the scoop on Zook. His teams play up or down to the level of competition. I wasn’t surprised that Illinois beat Ohio State this weekend, in fact, I told a lot of people it was a very real likelihood. However, I also won’t be surprised if Illinois struggles with Northwestern or even loses.
In the last five seasons, no matter the head coach, Illilnois has seemed to do just what Brett indicates above: play to the level of competition. Of course, during the past four seasons before this one, it didn’t matter the level; Illinois was just flat out bad on the football field.