"Zook's recruits raising eyebrows"

It's relatively easy for coaches to get a "bounce" when they come into bad programs. You sell playing time, for one thing. That gets harder after several years of losing, because there's a track record of inability to turn things around. But a first-year 1-10 record is great for recruiting, odd as that may seem.

 

Also, if Juice Williams and his coach are talking Zook up big-time, then he can make some inroads in the Chicago Public League, which has become much stronger in recent years. Chicago is like that -- they like you, everything goes you way. They don't, and you're completely frozen out. Ask Lon Kruger.

 

Separated at birth Ron Zook and Gary Cole.

 

This thread has gone too long without the phrase "whining, arrogant Domer losers" having been used.
Thank you.

 

Maybe Zook is sending out the quotes from the Arkansas QB that refer to Weis as a "weasel" and absolutely rips Notre Dame's recruiting efforts.
That should make Golden Domers happy.

 

No one should question Zook's recruiting ability. He's brilliant at it, because he's so energetic and unpolished that he comes off as genuine to the kids compared to the other guys. That quality's also what makes him a fumbling, embarassing mess when he addresses the media or fan groups as the face of the program. As for Zook's staff, he hires assistants based on two things: 1. recruiting and 2. cronyism. At UF in 2004, he hired a high school coach to be his secondary coach just to help get kids out of Jacksonville despite the fact the guy had no college experience and couldn't coach DBs worth a crap.

Zook's Illinois players will love him, they just won't improve under him or benefit from well designed game plans. But no one, especially a Notre Dame water carrier like that hack Lemming, should question if he and his staff can recruit. The next few years he'll get them to some mediocre bowls, pull a big upset or two while losing a game a year to a MAC team, then the fans will get sick of underachieving and he'll be gone. The next guy after him will win the Rose Bowl if he has any clue how to coach.

 

Ruffino put it perfectly. If I'm a recruiter going against Illinois on the trail, I say to a kid and his parents: "Ron Zook is a wonderful guy, and a good recruiter. Look at what Urban Meyer is doing with his players. But if you go to Illinois, Ron Zook will not be your coach when you leave."

 

I'm gonna disagree. The STORY seems to be a decent look at how well it appears the Illini are doing in luring top players. The HEADLINE seems a bit of a reach.

The quotes were fine, but Lemming's slam at Illinois recruiting staff (they stink but they seem to be doing a good job but he's they're still "commitments") was a bit much. Seemed a bit below the belt.

 

I'll agree with an earlier poster. In the minimal recruiting coverage I do, I find the number one thing players look for is early playing time (and easy pussy). Zook can offer that and point to the record.

 

Anybody who continues to quote Tom Lemming should probably get his press credential revoked. ... Okay that's too harsh. But I'm amazed that despite all the shady stuff out there about him, i.e. the Myron Rolle story and other "hey mention Notre Dame" stuff, people continue to quote him. When I have a recruiting story, I do gulp and call rivals.com and scout.com. But not Lemming.

 

Well, I'm here.

I haven't read the article thoroughly yet. But I have a feeling it's in the vein of "Big 10 schools like Ohio State and Michigan are unhappy they have to contend with this."

That being said, this Brent guy might be awesome. But generally, being the fifth-ranked player in Illinois high school football is not saying a whole hell of a lot.

And these players from Illinois won't know whether Zook's game plan is good because Illinois high school football sucks, sucks, sucks.

But this is the path the university chose to take. The school is tired of being a doormat in football, so it brought in a huckster to lure in "talent."

 

Lemming's actually a good guy. Where he runs afoul of all of us in this business is that we all try to apply all of our learned journalism ethics to what he does. I'm not sure Tom even went to college. He certainly has no journalism training. If you tried to explain to him that steering kids one way or the other, or saying nice things about a coaching staff publicly in return for access, was some breach of ethics, he wouldn't understand what you were talking about. It would be Greek to him. In Tom's world, we do one thing, he does something else. He's a businessman mostly, not a journalist. And that's how he operates. But he's a nice guy, not a devious bone in his body. Not intentionally so.