It Just Doesn't Add Up for the Illini

Universtiy of Illinois head coach Ron Zook recently made statements in a Sun-Times interview that leave me shaking my head.  If you read all the statements attributed to the coach in the article, it represents a great deal of frustration.  The statement that starts the head shaking is this:

‘‘Sometimes I think as a university and as a group of fans, we shoot ourselves in the foot. The negative recruiting, it all stems from us, from our own people. Rather than getting behind the program, they want to start lambasting it.

‘‘The negative recruiting was the worst I’ve ever seen it this year. But a lot of that is our own people. There’s not enough people that believe this program can be where it can be. You’re changing attitudes. You’re changing beliefs. ‘There they go again. They can’t sustain it.’ When you go back and look at what’s happened the last 25 years, it’s going to take a tough son of a [gun] to get through that. "

There's a lot of churning thought and emotion in those two paragraphs.  Here is an unemotional contrast, the Illinois football team's record over the last 10 years, beginning with the final four years of Ron Turner's teams and the most recent six being the Ron Zook years.

         Overall      Big 10         Finish
2009      3-9           2-6             9th
2008      5-7           3-5             6th
2007      9-4           6-2             2nd
2006      2-10         1-7             10th
2005      2-9           0-8             11th
2004      3-8           1-7             10th
2003      1-11         0-8             11th
2002      5-7           4-4              5th
2001     10-2          7-1              1st
2000      5-6           2-6              9th

I have met Ron Zook just once, and that was very brief.  He's not a particularly lovable kind of guy; that's not a slam, it's just a fact.  He's a big time football coach, a million dollar a year guy with a lot of desire to succeed.  The teams over which he has presided have had some spotlight moments, but his and his predecessor's overall body of work over the past decade isn't very inspiring, and that's the problem I have with the statements Coach Zook made.

Fans need hope, and they need an identity to embrace.  If the Illini displayed an indication of a consistent performance level or trend, there would be something for fans to embrace. 

What recent history has offered instead is a once every few years good team overshadowed by a lot of bad seasons. A great example is the just completed Juice Williams and Aurelious Benn years, years that were a lot of hype and a lot of unmet expectations.  The team has no sustaining identity other than Coach Zook, and the not-so-lovable-guy thing lands with a "thud".
So, if I was directing P.R. here, I'd suggest that the coach reach out to the loyal fans and compliment that there's a lot of them in Memorial Stadium on Saturday afternoons, year in, year out, who keep wanting to love their team despite stubborn arithmetic that says they're likely to be disappointed.  'Cause when there's enough disappointment built up, resentment and anger and outcry follow, and there's usually another "thud" that follows that.

Then comes the moving van and the next guy.