Ron Zook at Illinois

Don Flamenco

Moderator
The guy may not be one of the better "gameday coaches" but he can flat-out recruit. He just received a commitment from WR Chris James one of the top WR's in the country out of Morgan Park HS in Chicago. He had offers from schools like Ohio State, Tennessee, Penn State, among many others...

He also has them as the leader for QB Demetrius Jones who is probably one of the top 3-4 QB's in the country.

I have no doubt that within 4-5 years Illinois will have as much talent in the Big Ten as anyone else, the question is, will Zooker be able to turn that into wins on the field???
 
 
They may struggle until he gets his own players into the program, but he has already done an excellent job of recruiting in his short time there. I believe he also swiped WR Derrick McPherson (Spelling?) away from Florida on signing day last year...
 
Don Flamenco said:
The guy may not be one of the better "gameday coaches" but he can flat-out recruit. He just received a commitment from WR Chris James one of the top WR's in the country out of Morgan Park HS in Chicago. He had offers from schools like Ohio State, Tennessee, Penn State, among many others...

He also has them as the leader for QB Demetrius Jones who is probably one of the top 3-4 QB's in the country.

I have no doubt that within 4-5 years Illinois will have as much talent in the Big Ten as anyone else, the question is, will Zooker be able to turn that into wins on the field???

In a recent rivals article, Jones stated that Notre Dame is currently his leader, which is interesting because they already have a commitment from Zach Frazer. Zook nabbing his teammate may change that, though. They still have one more teammate that is a top prospect, an offensive lineman whose name escapes me.

Chicago will be interesting. Iowa has really cleaned up there the last few years. ND, under Willingham and Davie, neglected this traditional breeding ground. Weis has vowed to get Chicago back and has assigned it to Rob Ianello, cited by ESPN a few years ago as one of the top ten recruiters in the country. Now a great recruiter in Zook shows up at Illinois.

The Zook-Ferentz-Weis battles in Illinois, specifically Chicago should be really interesting in the coming years.
 
Don Flamenco said:
They may struggle until he gets his own players into the program, but he has already done an excellent job of recruiting in his short time there. I believe he also swiped WR Derrick McPherson (Spelling?) away from Florida on signing day last year...

If he gets Jones, that could go a long way toward getting his players in there quickly. Much like Leak played a sort of pied piper role in recruiting for Florida a few years back.
 
scooper said:
If he gets Jones, that could go a long way toward getting his players in there quickly. Much like Leak played a sort of pied piper role in recruiting for Florida a few years back.

I just read an article today on Jones from Rivals and he said his favorites were Notre Dame, Illinois, and Tennesee. He has 36 scholarship offers currently. Whoever lands him could be getting the best QB in the nation in my opinion...

His stats are very impressive:
6-foot-3 and 192 pounds
Threw for 2300 yards and 21 TD passes and only 3 Interceptions as a junior.
Rushed for 1100 more yards as a junior with 17 TD's
Led Morgan Park to a 12-1 record.

I think his teamate's name who is a big-time OL prospect is Ramone Johnson or something like that...
 
Zook can certainly flat out recruit, the time and effort he spends recruiting is way above and beyond that of any other coach, even Mack Brown.

The players love that Zook is a "players coach" who tries to make friends with them, not an authority-kid relationship.

It is this same strategy that hurts Ron on the grid iron, the consensus is that Ron ran a program that lacked the displine and conditioning to succeed at Florida. 4 of Florida's 5 losses last year were due to blowing a lead in the second half.

Zook also tended to play too conservative at times, see versus FSU last year, and failed to utilize the qb and wr talents at UF like his predecessor, Steve Spurrier did.


All this being said, Zook will certainly find it hard to keep up the recruiting success he enjoyed at UF, because Illinois just simply isn't as big of a draw as Gainesville. The success that Ron is experiencing right now may very well be due to the second year recruiting success that most new coaches experience.

As a Gator fan, i loved the great recruiting classes that Zook brought in, although they were lacking in lb's and running back's....but am glad to see that Meyer has shown to be at least as good of a recruiter as Zook and certainly has the discipline/conditioning advantage over Zook (as evidenced by Meyer's spring practices versus Zook's spring practices).
 
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