I dare anyone...

I dare any one of you douchebags out there that wanted to give Ron Zook credit for Florida's 2006 BCS Championship team to come here and open your pieholes now. How many of the current Gator players were recruited by Zook?

Ha, I actually had commenters come here and tell me that Meyer couldn't win with his own players. Well think again asswipes. Where is Ron Zook with all of "his" players at Illinois? Home for the holidays, that's where. We had excellence at Florida before Zook and after Zook. So where was the problem during Zook's years? Was it the players or was it the coach? You know the answer. Last year the core of Illinois' Rose Bowl team was recruited by Ron Turner. Mendenhall, Lehman, most of the offensive line. This year, not so much.

Have a fun off-season. Hope springs eternal. I'll be here for you to vent with when it all comes apart again next year.

I was in a lousy mood because of the Capital One Bowl debacle so I decided to cheer myself up by reading the Rose Bowl game thread over at Illiniboard.com. Boy those moRons didn't disappoint. I just went over there though to copy and paste some of the best (worst) of it but they deleted it. Damn. The general sentiments fell into these categories:

It was a great season anyway. Indicative of course of the low expectations these losers have. Florida has the same record and bowl loss too and literally sick to my stomach. These guys got embarrassed in a game that had the entire Disney/ABC/ESPN hype machine all over it and they are satisfied.

Mike Locksley is the problem. Yeah, it's the offensive coordinator, not the man that hired him and has the power to overrule him.

USC has no class. When you start to get your ass kicked, all of a sudden the comportment of the other team takes on a whole new dimension. Their celebrations suddenly make them "douchebags".

USC got all the breaks. Luck plays a part in football, but USC brought their rabbits foot, four-leaf clover and a magic leprechaun with them to the game and that's why they won 49-17.

Fortunately they still have a "post game thread" up and I was able to grab these beauties:

There are 3 Reasons We Lost Today

1. The "Script" of plays at the beginning of the game that brilliantly avoided Rashard and orchestrated our quick 14-0 hole.

2. Luck. Every single ball bounced USC's way tonight.

3. The fact that every Ron Turner recruited upperclassman was physically overmatched.

These are fixable problems. The Zookification of our program has just begun.

God help them. The Zookification of anything = being fucked up beyond recognition. This guy is going to be lamenting the loss of the Turner veterans (6 on defense and 4 on the offensive line and their star running back was verbally committed to Illinois before Turner was fired).

The dumbest thinking was on display when discussing whether or not the Rose Bowl made a mistake in selecting Illinois. One guy thinks Jim Delaney did Illinois a favor:

Anybody think.....

Jim Delaney might feel like he did us a favor getting us in and then we turned around and screwed him? Fat Chance the Rose Bowl ever listens to the Big Ten again about the "Big Ten / Pac-10 rivalry"

First of all Illinois was rightly or wrongly the second highest ranked Big 10 team in the BCS standings. No other Big 10 team was eligible to play in a BCS bowl based on their ranking. Since bowl revenues are shared by all teams in the conference, there was no way Delany was going to miss out on a Big 10 paycheck of more than $17 Million.

When a rational poster commented that the Rose Bowl is laughing all the way to the bank another idiot pipes up with this gem:

until the ratings come in then they better get a better matchup for 2009 or they're gonna have another year of lower ad revenues

While the folks that run the Rose Bowl prefer to have a highly rated game, they know that this year's game has no influence on the ratings of next year's games. And the fact is that the ad space in these games is pre-sold well in advance. Believe me, the rates that ABC will command for next year's game will not be affected by this year's ratings one bit.

Welcome Illini Fans!

Hey, I want to thank all of you who stopped by today. Thanks to a posting on an Illini message board, I've more than doubled the lifetime readership of this blog. Oh I know a lot of you are angry and you are taking out your anger on me. That's fine. I didn't start this blog to make friends. I've got plenty, despite what some of you may think. I won't address the personal remarks because honestly I don't give shit about any of that. But I will address comments about the savior of Illinois football, Ron Zook.

Ron Zook has proven that he can attract athletes to Illinois that wouldn't have otherwise considered the school. That is obvious. What he hasn't proven to date is that he can coach a lick. And you know what I'm saying is true. Your very own message boards have questioned the boneheaded decisions that have been made during the games. The difference this year is that Illinois has the talent to overcome those boneheaded decisions. Perhaps your memories are short but how many rugby punts did the Zooker, the guru of special teams, attempt with disastrous consequences last season? How about going for a 2-point conversion early in the game when it's not called for?

Congratulations on the 5-1 record. It certainly is new territory for a program like Illinois. But don't kid yourself. You beat a Penn State team that lost to a Michigan team that lost to a division 1AA team. Wisconsin? Their signature win was against Michigan State. A paper tiger if ever their was one. Illinois just may be the class of the Big Ten, but let's face it, the Big Ten sucks donkey balls.

In any case, you can thank Ron Zook the recruiter, not Ron Zook the coach, for your recent success. You should enjoy your newfound success while you can because if history has taught me anything it's that if you keep watching, Ron Zook the coach will eventually get in the way of Ron Zook the recruiter. There's a reason I'm smiling in that picture in the sidebar. I'll still be here. Make sure to stop by.

P.S. Eat me.