Category: College Football

Zook Has a Happy National Signing Day

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Football, Illinois Fighting Illini, Sports3 Comments

Coach Ron Zook lived up to his reputation as a top-notch recruiter and worked some miracles with his first true recruiting class (last year he was merely wrapping up the Ron Turner regime).  Scout.com rated the 2006 Illini recruiting class at #28 in the nation, Rivals.com put us at #30, while both agreed that we were #4 in the Big Ten behind the traditional heavyweights of Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan.

Considering that Illinois had a 1-23 record in Big Ten games over the last three seasons, the fact that we’re getting a better recruiting class than Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan State this year is indicative of how good Zook is at the recruiting game.  Particularly promising is Isiah Williams out of Chicago Vocational (the high school alma mater of Illini and Bears legend Dick Butkus) who is ranked as the #5 quarterback in the national class of 2006.  He looks like a mobile quarterback in the mold of Michael Vick and Vince Young, which would be an incredible development for the Illinois offense.

I’ve always felt that with a high quality home recruiting base of Chicago and St. Louis, the Illinois football program ought to be able to field at least a top 25 team every year and compete for the Big Ten title on a consistent basis.  However, we’ve been losing hometown players like Williams over the past five years to schools such as Iowa and Wisconsin, much less the monster programs of Notre Dame, Michigan, and Ohio State.

Hopefully, Zook’s success this year is a sign that the tide is turning on the recruiting front.  I’d like to see some top 10 recruiting classes within the next few years.  Of course, that will only happen if Zook excels at the other and much more important aspect of his job: winning football games.

Forever Young

On By Frank the TankIn College Football, Sports2 Comments

If you had read my BCS bowl picks from last week, you would be scoffing at those headlines today proclaiming that Texas “stunned” USC for the national championship (for the record, I was dead on in my Rose, Fiesta, and Orange Bowl predictions while West Virginia screwed me on the Sugar).

There were two things that actually were stunning, however.  First, this year’s Rose Bowl managed to live up to the ridiculous hype.  The momentum shifting between the teams on every other possession in the second half, the major stars making huge plays, the winning score coming with 19 seconds… this was instant ESPN Classic material!

Second, and obvious to anyone who watched this game, was the complete and utter dominance of Vince Young.  I personally have never, ever seen an individual take over a football game at any level, college or pro, the way Young did last night.  30 for 40 on passing plus rushing for 200 yards???  3 rushing touchdowns and breaking at least 5000 tackles???  Basically, if you combined the two-headed Trojan monster of Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart into a mighty morphin football player, you would get Vince Young.  This was more reminiscent of the way Michael Jordan and Larry Bird would completely take over basketball games on all ends of the floor than comparisons to past football greats – guys just don’t single-handedly do things like that in football if only because of the nature of the sport.  But Vince Young rose to that level last night to give Bevo and his friends a national championship.

Here are some great insights on the game from around the web:

1) The Sports Guy’s Running Diary – Brilliant and hilarious as always, from the “Coach Fredo” references to aptly noting (as my wife and I enjoyed last night) how Keith Jackson pronounced John Stamos’ name.

2) Michael Wilbon – The South Side’s PTI rep points out appropriate comparisons regarding Reggie Bush, Vince Young, and Texas coach Mack Brown.

3) Len Pasquarelli – Will Vince Young really pull a Matt Leinart and return for his senior season even though his NFL draft stock is at its peak?  It looks like the answer is yes for now.

4) Rose Bowl Celebs – The L.A. Times shows the specific seat numbers of a number of celebrity attendees of last night’s games.  By the way, after seeing that Rodney Peete was considered “great” enough to stand along side former USC alums Marcus Allen and Ronnie Lott on the sidelines, O.J. must have really taken it personally.  I mean, it’s one thing to hold that whole murder thing against him, but inviting Rodney Peete?  Yikes!

Anyway, this was a national championship game for the ages.  I’ll be back after tonight’s huge Illinois – Michigan State Big Ten opener.  Go Illini!

The Tice is Right

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, Chicago Bulls, College Football, NBA Basketball, NFL FootballLeave a comment

The Bears did their part in trying to save Mike Tice’s coaching job in Minnesota this weekend by working Brad Maynard into the QB rotation.  I was hoping that the late season surge and one more win by the Vikings would treat us to another season of Tice in all of his glorious idiocy.  Alas, it was not to be.  The players hadn’t even finished showering after the game by the time Vikings management axed Tice on Sunday.  All of the NFC North outside of Minnesota will dearly miss the hodge podge of putrid defense, ticket scalping, sex cruises, and underachieving teams.  I challenge anyone to find a more horrific yet unintentionally hilarious coach in the history of the NFL.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling really good about the Bears’ chances to advance in the playoffs and it’s hard to fully justify.  We’re being led by a QB who has played in 1 1/2 games this season.  The performance in Green Bay on Christmas Day wasn’t exactly dominating.  Yet when our team is heading into the playoffs with the best defensive unit in the NFL (the stats may say the Bucs finished ahead of the Bears, but that’s the product of the scrubs’ play in week 17), I’ve got to feel pretty good.  We’re going to be subjected to another month of talk about the ridiculous offensive output of the Colts and Seahawks, but once again, people are going to smoke the peace pipe of high scoring teams and forget that defense wins championships.  At this point, I really like the historical symmetry of the Bears and Patriots meeting in the Super Bowl once again 20 years after the great culmination to the 1985 Bears season.  If that happens, people are going to question whether I made a deal with the devil after the Illini made the Final Four and the White Sox won the World Series in a one-year timespan.

Other New Year’s Weekend Sports Tidbits:

1) You Can’t Teach (the Bulls) Height – The Bulls’ losing streak hit 7 games last night and it’s apparent that the team’s great depth at the guard and small forward positions cannot compensate for their sheer lack of size in the frontcourt.  John Paxson shouldn’t be blamed for the Eddy Curry fiasco this past summer, but it would have been nice if someone like new Bucks center Jamaal Magloire (who smacked the Bulls for 14 points last night) was in a Bulls uniform as a replacement.  Unless the Bulls get some size by the trade deadline, I don’t think we’re making the playoffs this season.

2) Troy’s Conquest – I predicted in my BCS bowl picks last week that Ohio State would easily cover the spread against Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl, but I thought it would be because of the Buckeye defense.  Instead, OSU QB Troy Smith threw for more big passing plays in a single game than Woody Hayes called for in his entire coaching career while rolling over the overrated Irish.  Kudos to Buckeye coach Jim Tressel for turning a classic grind-it-out Big Ten running team into an explosive offense in the hands of Smith.  With the junior QB likely returning, we might be watching Ohio State go for national championships in both football and basketball next year.  (On a side note, doesn’t Brady Quinn’s sister/A.J. Hawk’s girlfriend bear a spooky resemblance to Steven Tyler?  Lady looks like a dude!)

Coming soon: recaps of the Rose Bowl and the huge Illinois – Michigan State Big Ten opener, plus some long overdue posts on politics and the baseball hot stove league.  Until then, happy back to work day!

The Yellow Rose Bowl of Texas – My BCS Bowl Picks

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Football, Sports3 Comments

There are few things more idiotic in sports than the refusal of the powers-that-be in college football to go to a playoff system.  However, I’ve got to admit that the BCS bowl matchups this year are pretty compelling.  Here are my picks against the spread:

1) Fiesta Bowl: Ohio State (-4) over Notre Dame – The national media continues to fawn over Charlie Weis’ turnaround of the Irish program, but they seem to forget that the most impressive game they played this year was a loss to USC (granted, the Trojans cheated to pull out that win), they needed a miracle to beat Stanford (who lost to Division 1-AA school UC-Davis this season), and they got lit up by a pretty bad Michigan State offense.  Meanwhile, Ohio State’s only blemishes were at the hands of fellow BCS participants Texas and Penn State.  The relatively unheralded Buckeye defense is going to stifle the Irish.  OSU backers can easily give the 4-point spread because this game isn’t going to be close – the Buckeyes are winning big.

2) Sugar Bowl: Georgia (-7.5) over West Virginia – The Sugar Bowl is in Hot-lanta this year, so this is going to be a virtual home game for the Bulldogs.  Also, the fact that Georgia had to survive a gauntlet run in the SEC to make it here while West Virginia faced a bunch of Big East basketball schools means UGA is quite a bit more battle tested.

3) Orange Bowl: Florida State (+7.5) over Penn State – In the JoePa – Bobby Bowden septuagenarian matchup, Penn State will win the game but won’t cover the spread.  I love the skills of Nittany Lions QB Michael Robinson and his team was a couple of seconds away in their game with Michigan from being undefeated.  However, despite some bad losses by the ‘Noles, Free Shoe U is still talented and the game is being played within driving distance of campus.  The score is going to be tight here.

4) Rose Bowl/National Championship Game: Texas (+7) over USC – The two-week SportsCenter exercise of matching up the 2005 USC team with the best college football teams of the past 50 years is way premature considering that Texas is not only going to beat the spread, but also beat the Trojans straight up for the national title.  Reggie Bush is spectacular (I actually hope the Packers win one more game just so they have no chance of picking this guy in the NFL draft) and Matt Leinart is a great field general for the Trojans.  However, isn’t there a little saying that defense wins championships?  Remember Ohio State shutting down the all-world Miami offense in 2002?  Texas has a good defense while USC struggled to stop Fresno State.  Plus, the Longhorns aren’t a one-trick pony, either – Vince Young can lead scoring drives as well as anyone.  This is going to be billed as a big upset even though it really shouldn’t be if you take two seconds to think about what types of teams win championships over the years.  The Longhorns are going to devastate the Trojan faithful in L.A. in a classic Rose Bowl game.