Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

For Illinois football fans, it’s been a hard couple of years. But patience breeds reward — at least when you’re being patient with Coach of the Year Ron Zook’s Fighting Illini. The 9–3 team arrived in southern California on Christmas night, beginning a week of preparation (and vacation) before they face off with the seventh-ranked USC Trojans in the New Year’s Day Rose Bowl.

As you settle in front of your flat screen with a bowl of orange and blue nacho chips at your side, keep these five questions in mind. In all likelihood, the answers to these questions will play into the outcome of the game.

Saturday night promises to be the kind of night that any good football fan lives for: the family around, the weekend in full swing, Illinois’ Rose Bowl appearance just a few days off, and the chance to watch the New England Patriots (with a likely win over the New York Giants at the Meadowlands) sweep the regular season and solidify themselves as official front runners for the title of “Greatest NFL Team Forever and Ever—and Nineteen-Seventy-What?”

I was one of few present last Saturday for the tip-off of the second annual Shootout at the Hall. The culprit: a snowstorm and an early start for a day-long affair featuring seven boys’ high school basketball games. The crowd thickened somewhat as the snow continued to accumulate outside, but even for the afternoon’s marquee match ups Section A of the Hall was hardly full.

The Dolphins won, breaking a 14-game losing spree, and the Patriots also won, keeping their history-sculpting win streak alive. The local-favorite Chicago Bears made the NFL headlines this week as well, becoming one of many recent Super Bowl runner-ups to find themselves officially eliminated from the playoffs. Now is the time of year when fantasy leagues come to end and families full of football diehards abandon their holiday shopping to watch their teams complete the process of sinking or swimming. If your team’s still treading water, a telling weekend awaits.

Fukudome

I don't know a lick of Japanese, but I'm willing to learn. At 30 years old, Fukudome (pronounced "KOH-skay foo-koo-DOUGH-may") has been a star in the Japanese leagues since he was a teenager. He was selected as the youngest player ever on an Olympic baseball team, which won a silver medal in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. A scouting report from ArmChairGM.com says Fukudome has doubles power and will likely put up a high OBP in the Majors, but won't slug more than 15–20 HRs. He's a gold-glove caliber right fielder and has a strong arm.

Most Hoosier fans who followed the game closely saw what they thought to be a natural succession in the history of Indiana’s storied program: Alford was moving up the ranks as a coach to be groomed as heir-apparent to the General himself.

Then the unexpected happened. Steve Alford got hot too early as a head coach, and he took his mid-major Southwest Missouri State to the Sweet 16 in 1999. They lost to Duke 78–61.

The Assembly Hall may no longer be the home of the IHSA boys’ state basketball tourney (a distinction now held by the Peoria Civic Center), but that doesn’t mean locals must do without a glimpse of high-school hoops under the dome.

This Saturday, Dec. 15, the Assembly Hall hosts the Shootout at the Hall, an all-day event boasting seven high-school boys’ games. The local triumvirate — Urbana High, Champaign Centennial and Champaign Central — are represented along with a group of schools from the Chicago and Peoria areas. The nightcap belongs to the smaller schools, as Unity faces Cissna Park/Crescent-Iroquois (CPCI).

If you count the guys on each team’s eight-man practice squad, there are currently more than 1,950 players in the NFL — and 19 of these saw their college action at the University of Illinois. Among them, Kelvin Hayden and Aaron Moorehead (both with the Indianapolis Colts) picked up Super Bowl rings in last year’s big show, and Jameel Cook (now a Houston Texan, but a former Tampa Bay Buccaneer) got his own hardware in early 2003. But only one active Illinois alum has two rings, and that’s New England Patriots free safety Eugene Wilson. Following an unflinching defeat Sunday over the Pittsburgh Steelers — viewed by many as the last hope to take down the Pats — the Patriots look well on their way to putting Wilson and his teammates in the history books as the first franchise to go undefeated in the regular season in nearly 35 years. And if all goes according to Bill Belichick’s plan, Wilson will have another ring to add to his collection.

Historically, there may not be another team quite like Northwestern. Never making it to the NCAA Tournament, and earning their last conference championship (a shared victory with Ohio State, no less) just before Hitler took power in Germany, there seems to be no good reason that Northwestern, who some consider the Harvard of the Midwest, should play among perennial powerhouses like Michigan State, Illinois and Indiana.

This is a school known for its big brains, not big brawn. When today’s Big Ten conference first formed in 1896, Northwestern’s inclusion as a private institution didn’t seem like a big deal: University of Chicago was right there along side them and the Wildcats enjoyed success in basketball against the same teams that they are competing with today. In 1946, however, after WWII ended and the University of Chicago deactivated from the conference, Northwestern stayed on and began what’s now considered to be one of the worst streaks in major conference college basketball.

Those of us bemoaning the beginning of another long year for the Illini basketball team need to stop reading Ken Pomeroy’s scouting report for Illinois — which tells us a host of things we already know about this team, and a few we don’t — and start listening to Kenny Battle. Why? Because former Flyin’ Illini Kenny Battle, who called the Weber St. game for the Big Ten Network, may be the worst color analyst in basketball. Listening to him call a game can be painful, yet relieving. His blather has the power to distract Illini Nation from what we already know about this Illini team: It doesn’t get to the line often enough; when it does get to the line it can’t make its free throws at anything close to an acceptable clip (58.8%); it shoots too many three-pointers after wasting away the shot clock; and its personnel has a tendency to make poor decisions and play submissively on offense, especially when facing a zone defense. Collectively, these are things we already knew going into this season. (See: season 2006–07. Or season 2005–06.)

Say what you want about luck or wobbly refs or divine intervention. The fact of the matter is that even the royalty of the NFL needs, on occasion, a little help from the opponent to keep a reign going. Yes, I’m talking about the Patriots vs. the Ravens. Sure, the Pats, facing likely defeat, came back like champions. But, in the final minutes, the Ravens (some of them, at least) played like men determined to lose. An ill-advised time out? Bart Scott’s double penalty of angry passion? The NFL cherishes its brutes, but it’s the players with the smarts that prevail in the end.

Say what you will about Bruce Weber and his ability to motivate a team, these Illini are going to have to find something more in their game if they want to make a legitimate run at the Big Ten title. For the most part, their outing against Maryland was an exercise in futility. Watching them struggle from the perimeter (.333%, 24–72 from the floor) and even from the charity stripe (4–9), one has to wonder if a team that depends on a two-star guard from Champaign to rack up points from beyond the paint is even capable of competing at a national level. (That guard, junior Trent Meacham, graduated from Champaign’s Centennial High.)