Taylor Bell: September 2007 Archives

John Whitelaw, Hinsdale Central's sophomore quarterback, didn't produced a highlight film in Saturday's 21-6 homecoming victory over Downers Grove North. But he showed the kind of athleticism, skills and poise that figure to make him one of the most recruited players in the state in two years.

The 6-0, 165-pounder, optioning out of coach Mike DiMatteo's spread offense, rushed five times for 41 yards and completed 7-of-12 passes for 96 yards and one touchdown, a 22-yarder to Troy Laing.

He also completed a 23-yard pass to Mac Lagor and a 28-yarder to Davis Kalsbeek, then ran 14 yards to Downers North's 5 to set up another touchdown against a defense that had allowed only 56 points in five previous games.

The Big Ten is having a public relations nightmare with its inability to sell its television network and to convince critics that it is the bastion of academics. Conference commissioner Jim Delaney can't understand why everyone doesn't see the big picture as clearly as he does.

But Delaney has done something right. Guess what I discovered while switching from channel to channel on Friday night, trying to find something interesting to watch? My RCN cable company picked up the Big Ten Network. But my Comcast friends in the city still can't see Illinois/Penn State.

But Delaney isn't doing everything right.

I'm taking a brief timeout from celebrating that my two favorites teams, the Cubs and Yankees, have found ways to qualify for the postseason playoffs to discuss an issue that has been bothering me long before ESPN invented K zone.

When Glen Van Proyen, a Cubs scout since 2000, was coaching baseball at Maine South and in the early years when he was scouting for the Dodgers, the strike zone extended from the top of the kneecap to the letters on the uniform or the armpits.

So what happened?

All of this debate about "Who is No. 1?" or "Is Darius Fleming better than Steve Filer?" or "Why isn't Garrett Goebel rated higher than he is?" or "Will Loyola's Chance Carter be the best prospect in the state in two years?" or "Is everybody overlooking Rolling Meadows' Ty Kirk and Joe Okon?" caused me to think about how difficult it is to evaluate a 17-year-old player and project if he will develop into a productive performer in college.

I'm not a professional recruiting analyst like Tom Lemming. That's his business. He's been doing it for nearly 30 years and he's good at it. If he wasn't, he wouldn't have been doing it for so long. College recruiters wouldn't trust his evaluations. By comparison, everybody else--Rivals and Scout and SuperSport--are Johnny-come-latelies.

The poster boy for the overzealous parent is Steve Marinovich, who tried to groom his son Todd from early childhood to become an NFL quarterback.

He didn't do a bad job in that regard. Todd grew up to be a starting quarterback at USC, one of the nation's premier college football factories, and played with the Oakland Raiders in the NFL.

However, when last heard from, Todd had been arrested for smoking weed on a beach in California. He is 38 years old and is looking for his future.

I can't resist.

Follow the bouncing ball and see how Les Miles and LSU connect with the late Bo Schembechler and Michigan, then to Illiniboard.com and Peoriaman, Obelixo, Chieftan13 and Illini82.

This is going to be fun.

Illini Nation is overjoyed with Illinois basketball coach Bruce Weber's decision to hire former Illini point guard Jerrance Howard as his new assistant coach, replacing Tracy Webster. Howard is loyal and popular, young and energetic, and has the endorsements of several former players and two well-known AAU coaches who are based in the Chicago area.

But can he recruit Chicago? Can he succeed where Illinois has failed in the past? Can a Peoria product who admits to having no recruiting experience accomplish what former Illini assistants Tony Yates and Jimmy Collins and former Illinois coach Bill Self did in a short period of time? Public League coaches are skeptical. In fact, they are outraged by Weber's choice.

"Who is Jerrance Howard? He has no credibility and no stripes in Chicago. He'll get no rhythm in Chicago, no love," one coach said. "The fact that he is black and played at Illinois cuts no mustard up here. It's all about disrespecting Chicago."

Another coach said Howard's hiring is a slap in the face to Chicago. "We have no clue who (Howard) is. Now (Weber) has two Peoria people (the other is former Peoria Manual coach Wayne McClain) on his staff and nobody from Chicago. It makes no sense," he said.

In selecting Howard, who backed up Frank Williams, Deron Williams and Dee Brown at Illinois and has served on Billy Gillespie's staffs at Texas A&M and Kentucky for the last three years, Public League coaches arge that Weber overlooked several candidates with Chicago roots.

Former Whitney Young star Dennis Gates, now an assistant at Northern Illinois, said he wasn't interested in the job, that he wanted to stay at NIU. But Public League coaches said there were others who have solid credentials and their respect, including Illinois State assistant Paris Parham, Chicago State assistant Jamie Farr, Simeon coach Robert Smith, former Illinois stars Kenny Battle and Bryant Notree.

Larry Butler, director of the Illinois Warriors AAU program, told the Champaign News-Gazette that Howard, who once played for Butler, "will be unheralded in terms of getting recruits out of Chicago for Illinois."

"Butler has no pop in Chicago, only Downstate," one coach said.

Mike Mullins, director of the Illinois Wolves program, told the Champaign News-Gazette that it was important for Weber to find someone who was loyal and passionate to him and the program. "Now they have someone who played for them and knows what it takes to sell Illinois," Mullins said.

But one city coach predicted that Howard "will be totally ignored like Illinois was before Tony Yates and the post-Jimmy Collins era and until Bill Self came in. I just don't think (Weber) has any concept of what goes on in Chicago."

Another coach said the answer to solving Illinois' recruiting problems in Chicago is Dee Brown.

"He would be the best thing to happen to Illinois," the coach said. "He is magic in Chicago, someone with great personality and charisma. People love him. Unfortunately, at this time, he is trying to play professional basketball. But, if and when the time comes, he could take over the city."

How long have you been watching high school football? Who are the best players you ever saw? Well, I have been covering high school football in the Chicago area since 1968. In the last 40 years, here are the best players I have observed. Do you agree? Who are your choices?

Remember, we're talking about performance at the high school level, not what they accomplished in college for the NFL. For example, Thornridge's Quinn Buckner was an outstanding high school football player but opted to concentrate on basketball after his freshman year at Indiana. Some players didn't play in college because of injuries or academic problems.

Two of my favorite people in the high school coaching profession, Murney Lazier and Gary Korhonen, will acknowledge milestones in their careers within the next few weeks. They are the winningest coaches in state history. But their accomplishments are so much more than scribbling X's and O's on a chalkboard.

Lazier, who won a remarkable 88 percent (125-17-4) of his games in 18 years at Evanston, will have the stadium named in his honor during ceremonies on Oct. 20. Imagine, only 17 losses in 18 years. No one, before or since, has posted a higher winning percentage.

Korhonen figures to record the 301st career victory in his 36-year career in Illinois on Sept. 28 when his Richards team hosts Evergreen Park, one more than Bron Bacevich of Peru St. Bede in 1933-53 and Matt Senffner of Providence in 1968-2005. He actually will have won 310 in his career but nine were accomplished at Elkader, Iowa.

Are there enough good players or too many marginal players in major league baseball? Remember how it was when there were only two eight-team leagues? Today, with 30 teams, has the quality of the game taken a tumble? Is it too watered down with players who used to be in the minors?

"The game has always been the same," insists Glen Van Proyen, who has been involved in the game as a high school coach and a major league scout for 50 years. "There always have been stars, fill-ins and average players. The great players today are as great as ever."

Whenever the subject of random drug testing comes up, as it currently is among officials, administrators and coaches in the Illinois High School Association, I am reminded of a small bottle of tiny green pills that has been stored in my desk drawer for about 20 years.

The pills are Fluoxymesterone, an androgenic steroid "that is only useful to a small select group of athletes who seeks very specific goals. Athletes tend to use it to increase strength and aggression in the gym or in competition."

The bottle was mailed to me while I was researching a story about what was being perceived at the time as an increased use of drugs and steroids in high school sports, particularly football. Someone had discovered them being distributed at a suburban gym where young athletes were trying to increase their strength and muscle mass.

Glen Van Proyen, a former baseball coach at Maine South who has been a major league scout for the Dodgers and Cubs since 1965, the year of the first major league draft, doesn't argue the fact that the game is more popular today. But he points out that fewer Americans are playing the game and those who are aren't as fundamentally sound as their predecessors.

C'mon, Illini Nation. Get serious. Find something better to do with your spare time. Get off the Internet and start reading a good book--how about Tom Lemming's "Football's Second Season"--if the best you can do is debate whether Illinois is a football school or a basketball school. It is neither and won't be until it is understood that the only way to get a reputation is to earn it. Until then, you are merely searching for an identity.

This is how a long-time observer of Chicago Public League basketball views the city's relationship with the University of Illinois in general and with coach Bruce Weber's program in particular:

Weber's public relations is so bad, no one can help. There is a misconception about Weber. He is portrayed as a Downstater with no Chicago ties, that everyone in the city would gravitate to him after he was hired at Illinois and he wouldn't have to do any work to attract players. But he has two black assistants on his bench, more than most in the Big 10.

There is still an anti-Illinois sentiment in Chicago dating to the decision to hire Jimmy Collins to succeed Lou Henson. But some people in the city didn't like Collins when he was working in Champaign. So that isn't the problem.

Russell Ellington of Homewood-Flossmoor is one of the leading uncommitted football players in the Chicago area. Last June, however, he committed to Iowa State. Then he de-committed. Now he is no hurry to make a decision. It is a lesson for every athlete who is involved in the college recruiting process to learn.

With the exception of the Chicago White Sox, has any big-time sports program fallen farther and faster than coach Bruce Weber's Illinois basketball team?

From a season-long No. 1 national ranking and an eventual second-place finish in the 2005 NCAA tournament to recruiting oblivion in 2007. The number of big-time homegrown recruits who have passed up Illinois for Duke or Kansas or Kentucky or Oregon is puzzling and devastating.

Glen Van Proyen has been in and around baseball for more than 50 years, since he grew up in the Roseland/Pullman area on Chicago's South Side in the 1940s. He coached baseball at Maine South for 21 years, including a state runnerup in 1966, and scouted for the Los Angeles Dodgers for 35 years before joining the Chicago Cubs as a special assignment scout in 2000.

From time to time, as the 2007 major league baseball season winds down, Van Proyen will respond to questions about the game. Is the game better today? Why are fewer kids playing on sandlots? What about fundamentals? Why can't major leaguers execute a sacrifice bunt? What does it take to be a major leaguer? Do you have what it takes?

I have covered high school sports in Illinois for nearly 50 years. I saw Marshall and George Wilson dominate the 1958 state tournament at old Huff Gym. I saw Collinsville's Tom Parker score a record 50 points in the final of the Carbondale Tournament in 1967. And I climbed a ladder to the press box at old Parsons Field to see the Belleville/East St. Louis Thanksgiving Day football game.

There are great games and rivalries in every sport, some that have been contested for more than 100 years. Here are 10 Illinois high school events that every fan should experience during the 2007-08 season:

It's too early to tout Lake Forest as a serious contender for a state football championship. After all, the Scouts haven't fielded a winning team since 1998 and have qualified for the state playoff only twice since 1996. But they were 5-5 last season and this year's squad has what it takes to make opponents take them very seriously.

In the last several weeks, there have been many rumors, innuendos, falsehoods and unsubstantiated reports posted on the Internet and published in newspapers about the recruiting of Oak Park basketball star Iman Shumpert.