Illinois Football Recruiting Thread

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#107      

derrick6

Illini Dawg
Seattle
Just waiting for his 100 meter time to be ridiculed…

Intriguing pickup
 
#109      
All those marks are already very good, especially for a safety. We'll see if he can improve them if he's running track this Spring.
Yes, they are. And more than likely against sub-par competition and with sub-par facilities and coaching
 
#110      

Illinivek23

Gurnee
That 42" vertical is pretty explosive. Should be an interesting prospect to watch develop.
 
#111      

pruman91

Paducah, Ky
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#112      
So how did we get here? Well, for those of us who were students during the Mike White era, we were on the cusp of being a consistent Top 25 program. But in the 1980s the Big Ten Commissioner was Wayne Duke, a graduate of the University of Iowa. And the NCAA was run by Iowa-born Walter Byers (he took some classes at Iowa but didn't graduate). Those two did anything and everything to stop our football program from a becoming a success. I know, because as an alum who employed a lot of the Chicago are football players, I was constantly investigated by the Big Ten and NCAA. But the worst offender was, of course, an alumnus of our own school - Taylor Bell, the high school beat writer for the Chicago Sun-Times. He poisoned the well for Illini recruiting in Chicagoland like no other, revenge because he felt he should have be given the Illini SID job in the '70s. So glad the Tribune and Sun-Times have been replaced by other media.
I'm not from Chicagoland so this is an interesting perspective to me. Had to look up this Taylor Bell fellow. If indeed he had an impactful negative influence as you say, the fact that he is in the Illini Media Hall of Fame is gross.

 
#113      
I'm not from Chicagoland so this is an interesting perspective to me. Had to look up this Taylor Bell fellow. If indeed he had an impactful negative influence as you say, the fact that he is in the Illini Media Hall of Fame is gross.

From the story you linked..."In 1982, Bell’s story on basketball star Efrem Winters won the Jacob Scher Award as the best investigating reporting of the year in Chicago in any media." As I recall, it was a big hit piece on Illini star recruit Efrem Winters and the grades he received his senior year at King high school. He received something like straight A's, which meant he did not have to sit out his freshman year in Champaign. Keep in mind that was standard operating procedure in the Chicago Public League at the time - same thing happened a few years earlier with Russell Cross (Manley high school) so he could become eligible at Purdue. But Taylor never wrote about Cross. He was very critical of Winters' eligibility for the Illini.
 
#114      

Joel Goodson

respect my decision™
I'm not from Chicagoland so this is an interesting perspective to me. Had to look up this Taylor Bell fellow. If indeed he had an impactful negative influence as you say, the fact that he is in the Illini Media Hall of Fame is gross.


guy was a horse's butt. always sported a huge grudge against Illinois
 
#118      
We never dominated state of Illinois recruiting

Mike White succeed by bring in CA JC talent like Tony Eason, Jack Trudeau, David Williams, Craig Swoope (FL)
Ron Zook's relied heavily on out of state - Vontae Davis, Aerelius Benn
When people say never... there was a time in the 60's when we went to the rose bowl and had dick butkus and family friend who played on that team told me he personally knew 20+ players in the NFL... we didn't dominate illinois recruiting back then?
 
#120      
Taylor Bell, like Bruce Pearl and few others. Just very nasty people in life. If they die, no condolences from me.
 
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