Taylor Bell: September 2009 Archives

Illinois' football team is 1-2 with Penn State coming to town. Meanwhile, if that isn't bad enough, 15 of the top 30 high school prospects in the nation have not made commitments but not a single one of them has indicated he is considering Illinois. Are Illini fans cruising on the Titanic and is that a big iceberg coming their way?

What does that say about Illinois recruiting?

"It doesn't say anything at the moment," said recruiting analyst Tom Lemming. "It means the area they are recruiting doesn't have any top 30 players. Most of the top players in the Chicago area are committed (the Illini have landed Johnsburg's C.J. Fiedorowicz, Downers Grove South's Chandler Whitmer and Proviso East's Corey Cooper) and Proviso West's Kyle Prater still is in the mix.

How important is recruiting a difference-maker for a college football program? To develop an elite program, a top 20 program nationally, you need at least one or two difference-makers who are capable of converting a team from a pretender to a contender to a national champion.

"It is very important to get at least one difference-maker at certain positions--quarterback, tailback, wide receiver and rush end," said recruiting analyst Tom Lemming, who has been evaluating and uncovering difference-makers for 31 years.

"A difference-maker is a guy who can change a game with one play, a guy who you can count on to make a game-winning play when you are behind with two minutes to play or a defender who can stop a drive with one play."

I have just completed reading the edited manuscript of my fourth book, "Dusty, Deek and Mr. Do-Right: High School Football In Illinois," which will be published by University of Illinois Press in August, 2010.

Why so long? One thing I've learned is newspapers have their own deadlines and timetables and publishing houses have theirs. The deadline for submitting my manuscript was Jan. 31. Foolishly, I thought it would be for release before the 2009 season. No, the publisher has his own timetable for Book A, B, C and D. I'll see the page proofs in December, put together an index and wait for the book to come out prior to the 2010 season.

I'm excited about it. To my knowledge, this is the first book written on high school football in Illinois. There have been a lot of basketball books--I've written two of them--but nothing on football. Not until now.

Who were the 10 best high school football players produced in the Chicago area you ever saw who never made it to the NFL?

Let's not consider the 1930s and 1940s because the NFL was in its infancy and the salaries were so minimal that many college players opted to pump gas or flip hamburgers rather than get their brains beat out for what amounted to meal money in professional football.

My choices (in alphabetical order)?

Jack Bastable, Jon Beutjer, Quinn Buckner, Jim DiLullo, Howard Jones, Billy Marek, Tim Marshall, Jon Schweighardt, LaMarr Thomas, Homer Thurman.

If you read tea leaves or interpret the recent comments of Proviso West wide receiver Kyle Prater and his coach Famous Hulbert, you understandably might come to a conclusion that Prater will de-commit from USC and sign with Illinois in February.

A few days after Prater staged a well orchestrated press conference at the Hillside school to declare for the media's benefit that he was making an oral commitment to USC, he announced that it was a "soft verbal" and he planned to continue to make a few campus visits, likely Illinois and Oklahoma, to be certain of his choice.

The plot thickened last Saturday after the Proviso West/Proviso East game when Hulbert told a Chicago Sun-Times reporter that Prater would make a final decision by Christmas. "It's a long way from being over. Circumstances brought this about," he said.

Dave Nanninga was born in Mineral (population: 275), a one-time coal-mining community about four miles east of Annawan, just a long field goal south of I-80. Because Mineral's high school had closed in 1961, he attended nearby Annawan. The circumstances triggered a curiosity that has led to a fascinating hobby.

Nanninga, now an Illinois State policeman, began to do some research on his old high school. It had produced six district basketball champions. Even though the school never had more than 53 students, it once won 30 of 39 games--with only 15 boys in the school. He was bit by a bug. What about other schools that no longer existed?

In 2005, Nanninga founded his Website, "Illinois High School Glory Days." "I saw the reaction in my own community. If Mineral liked it so much, what about others? For alumni, it is a devastating thing when your school closes. I didn't want them to be forgotten," he said.

I am embarrassed to be a graduate of a university that has produced some lunatics who believe it is cool to stifle the First Amendment. But I'm not surprised to learn that other colleges also have graduated loonies who are suffering from the same myopia.

I suppose the lunacy reached its zenith over the weekend on Illiniboard.com when the crazies who only a few weeks ago were nominatiing Illinois coach Ron Zook for sainthood began to call for his ouster after Illinois' opening 37-9 loss to Missouri.

It wasn't subtle. It was brutal. After one game, the posters are calling for a boycott of future Illini games. There are more than six threads of "Fire Ron Zook." And that is followed up by "Take Juice (Williams) out the door with Zook." And these knuckleheads who disguise themselves in orange and blue really take themselves seriously.

Proviso West wide receiver Kyle Prater is going to USC, not Illinois, and maybe he made the right decision. Prater is an outgoing personality--he turned his recruiting into a sideshow--so he could be a good fit in the glitzy world of Los Angeles. But will he be a good fit at USC? Would he have been a better fit at Illinois?

"The way USC can recruit, Prater might end up somewhere else by February," recruiting analyst Tom Lemming said. "USC will still go after wide receivers. They have guys ahead of him who are stars. He should have gone to a school where he would have been the go-to guy. But apparently he was just more comfortable at USC."

It is apparent Prater was blown away by the celebrity and aura of the USC program. Choosing USC says he is a national recruit, maybe as good as Rivals says he is, the No. 2 player in the nation. But Lemming argues Prater isn't even the No. 2 player in the Chicago area, that he ranks behind Illinois-bound tight end C.J. Fiedorowicz of Johnsburg and Notre Dame-bound offensive lineman Christian Lombard of Fremd.