Illinois Football-A Bright Future

I’ve had season tickets to Illinois football games for the last 4 years. There were advertisements in the newspaper for cheap seats in the Horseshoe at Memorial Stadium, presumably because the administration wanted to boost ticket sales and help pay for the renovations to the stadium. Coming into the 2007 season, I knew little about the historical struggles of the football team, I was just excited to be able to watch us play against the tough Big Ten competition. Much to everyone’s surprise, the Illini finished with a 9-4 record and made it to the Rose Bow. Although they were dominated there by USC, the season was considered a smashing success, especially given that we had a whopping 4 total wins the last 2 seasons combined. My expectations for next season were through the roof. We struggled to compete at the tail end of the season and limped to a 5-7 finish, one short of the necessary number of wins to be bowl eligible. My expectations were tempered for the following season, but I expected us to get at least 6 wins. In typical fashion, we finished the season at 3-9. Everyone was calling for Coach Ron Zook’s head, but instead of firing him, we got new offensive and defensive coordinators.

That takes me to the past season. I can’t say that I expected very much out of this team. We had a redshirt freshman quarterback, and were relatively inexperienced. At the very least, I would get to watch Ohio State, the crown jewel of Big Ten football. A close game against the #2 Buckeyes started to convince me that we might be able to compete. A week later, we manhandled Penn State, in State College. I knew then that this team was for real. We kept the ball rolling with wins over Indiana and Purdue, but followed them up with mystifying losses to Michigan, Minnesota, and Fresno State. We finished the up and down regular season at 6-6, which earned us a bid to the Texas Bowl in Houston, where we would matchup against Baylor.

I was fortunate enough to attend the game, and I’ll share my observations with you. Whenever a Big Ten team goes to a bowl game, the opposing team almost always has a huge home-field advantage since the games are mostly held in warm weather cities. Baylor, located in Waco, Texas is only a 3-hour drive from Houston. They had about 35-40,000 fans there, while we had about 7-10,000. It was awesome seeing so much orange outside of Illinois. The fact that you can be 1,000 miles from home and have thousands of fans supporting you says a lot, it’s a big source of pride. There were severe thunderstorms on game day, so the roof was closed at Reliant Stadium, home of the Houston Texans. There were concerns going into the game about our ability to control Baylor’s fast paced offense. We answered the call in a big way, running the ball down their throats to the tune of almost 300 yards. Mikel Leshoure had 3 touchdowns to fuel our offense. Baylor was never able to establish their offensive rhythm. They were under fire the whole game from our defensive lines, with turnovers and incompletions stalling many of their drives. The final score was 38-14, and I went down to the first row to celebrate with some of the players, including future 1st round NFL pick Corey Liuget. Going to a bowl game is a lot of fun, but a win is what makes it an incredible experience. Everyone expected Illinois to be sitting at home during bowl season, so it was wonderful to witness our first bowl win in over 10 years. Every fanbase has some nasty people, but Baylor fans were much friendlier than USC fans. At the airport the next morning, I recognized many players from the team headed home, and a couple of them were even on my flight! I talked with Spencer Harris for a little while, and congratulated him on the bowl win. I can't wait until next season, when we have 8 home games and a chance to start a streak of winning seasons. Below you’ll find photos from the game: