Strange Sensations

It sort of feels funny. It's like you've been there before, but it was so long ago that you forgot what it feels like. It's comforting, and strangely exciting. And you're openly happy about it. Though apt, I'm not talking about breastfeeding. I'm talking about Illini football.

Top 20.

No kidding.

The big thing is that we run the ball well, and we can play a little D. The Lou Tepper era was characterized by us running the ball for 2 yards, running the ball for a yard, and then throwing an incompletion, followed by punting. The D was pretty good, so we would lose a bunch of 17-3 games. The Ron Turner era was characterized by us running the ball for 7 yards on 1st down, and then throwing two incompletions and punting. The D wasn't as good, so we lost a bunch of 38-17 games. That's not to say that parts of the Ron Zook era didn't look bad early on. But oddly enough, the funky shotgun spread can be a power running formation. And this year, we're sticking with the run. A lot of that is because Juice Williams hasn't really improved as a passer (though in fairness, he's been banged up pretty good this year).

Some problems have always been game management. Ron Turner's teams looked like Mike Martz teams crossed with the old Oakland Raiders - sloppy with the time management and lots of penalties. We'd be giving away timeouts early in the 3rd quarters because we couldn't get plays in there. We'd take bad roughing the passer calls at the worst possible times. The Ron Zook teams have not been much better, though this last game was looking pretty good. We only had 3 penalties (plus an offsetting personal foul), and one of those was a shady roughing the passer call, where the ref's angle made a hit look worse than it was (from the side, a shoulder and a helmet lead are awfully similar). More interestingly, we didn't use any timeouts, which means that we were communicating well.

From here on out, you figure that we should beat Minnesota, Ball St., and Northwestern. We'll have a good shot at Iowa, but winning on the road is always tough. Ohio St. and Michigan are always problematic. If this trend of good game management continues, we're likely looking at a very nice 9-3 type of season and a bowl game in a nice city. Who knows? Alamo Bowl seems like a reasonable option. Being optimistic, maybe even a Florida game in January?

In any case, it'll be fun to see how this seasons unfolds.

-Chairman