Illinois Season has Officially Been Zooked

Calling Mike Thomas. Anywhere, anywhere?? I think we all saw what is hopefully the beginning of the end of the Ron Zook tenure today at Purdue. What should have been a huge bounceback stomping of a terrible Purdue team turned into another trademark Ron Zook loss. For a season that started so strongly, it's a clear wakeup call to all those who follow Illinois sports of the reality and extent of Ron Zook's tenure.

Ron Zook with his trademark look.

We've seen this kind of loss before. How does this happen? What does this team actually do all week? Do they practice? For a team with this kind of talent and expectations, this is unacceptable.

The defense was simply awful the entire game. They let a Purdue offense that was 94th in passing and 24th in rushing march all over our supposedly stout defense the entire first half. In the second half, the real Purdue team came out to play, but Illinois still looked lost and didn't put points up on the board until it was too late.

For me, though, the focus of the game shouldn't be the terrible on field performance of the overrated defense, or the one-dimensional offense that gets shut down the second A.J. Jenkins is double covered. No, the focus should be on Ron Zook, and solely Ron Zook.

At no other program in the country would such ineptitude by a head coach continue to be tolerated. He can't handle something as simple as timeouts and time management, something that any 10 year old who plays Madden knows how to do easily. I mean seriously, there's not one person in the program who can help out ol' Ron with this? And did they gameplan all week at all? I've heard so much about Paul Petrino and Vic Koenning, and what they bring to the program, but they can only do so much when their boss is incompetent. So what is there to do?

Look, I realize that Ron is a good guy and does a great job with recruiting and being the face of the program. All of those things are extremely valuable to a college football program. But you know what is more valuable? WINS!!! No recruit cares about how well Zook can recruit (and seriously, he can sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves). But what value does that really bring if he doesn't win? I think we've finally (or maybe a few years ago) reached a point where the value of his stupid, inane, and utterly ridiculous losses is outweighing his recruiting and face of the program value. Mike Thomas, it's time to make a stamp on the program, like you did when you hired Brian Kelly at Cincinnati. I don't think my heart can take anymore of these losses.