The Canonization of Saint Ron the Martyr - UPDATED

I will never be able to understand the sports media's fascination and infatuation with Ron Zook. When Zook was struggling at Florida the fraternity of failed former coaches, chaired by Mike Gottfried, always came to his defense against those mean people that started fireronzook.com before he had ever even coached a game. Then when Urban Meyer turned the Gators around and won a BCS title, the pundits were quick to remind everyone that Zook had recruited 22 of 24 the champion Gator starters. Funny, I don't remember such articles being written about John Cooper or Butch Davis when their successors hoisted the crystal football. Just another curious event in what I call the media's canonization of St. Ron the Martyr.

The latest hagiography comes from Joe Henderson at the Tampa Tribune:

He handled his departure at Florida with a measure of grace that spoke loudly about the quality of the man. What he has done at Illinois spoke just as loudly about his strength as a recruiter.

Really? I seem to remember him taking any jab at Florida that he could over the last two seasons while he was accumulating a 4-19 record at Illinois. Sure Florida fans treated him like garbage, that's what happens when a loser is hired to coach a team whose fans expect to win. But Florida also made Zook a wealthy man, wealthier probably than any of us ever will be and that includes you Mr. Joe Henderson.

The Illini are loaded with speed and playmakers. They are also ahead of schedule. Zook had told people privately during the summer that he didn't expect his team to make a real splash until next season.

Zook never got that kind of patience at Florida. He recruited many of the players who won the national championship last season, but even that just enhanced his reputation as someone who couldn't be trusted to wear the headset. He could recruit, sure. But could he actually coach?

No one is asking that now.

Let's take these one at a time. Zook has always been a master of setting low expectations and promising better tomorrows. He famously said "that's what we're going to look like in three years" as the Miami Hurricanes came out of the tunnel at the Swamp in Zook's first big game as a head coach in 2002. Apparently, in his mind, he had already conceded the game his team was about to play.

Now let's talk about patience. Zook is in his third year at Illinois and he has certainly turned the the team around. But the Gators took a few steps backward in Zook's first season at Florida and never moved forward in the two subsequent seasons. If they had, he wouldn't have been fired, plain and simple. The fact is that despite the claims of improvement, Zook's Gators never demonstrated it between the lines, losing to teams that were vastly inferior in terms of talent and having a knack at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

As far as questioning Zook's coaching ability, there are plenty of us who still do. Hell, even Illini fans do. Just take a look at the game threads on the Illini message boards. The biggest display of Zookian brain farts was against Iowa where Zook accepted 2 penalties which gave Iowa another chance at 3rd down. In both cases Iowa converted, scoring a TD and getting a first down. Illinois would be tied for 1st in the Big 10 if not for that gaffe. But let's get real for a second, the Big 10 is not the SEC. I think Florida pretty much exposed OSU last year when the Buckeyes were a "consensus number 1". This year the top pundits were rightfully much more skeptical of the top ranked Buckeyes. Even homer Herbstreit had to concede that Ohio State had not beaten anybody. Let's not forget that the other team ahead of Illinois in the Big 10 is Michigan which lost to D1AA Appalachian State.

This is Zook's team and Zook's time. It probably never would have been that way at Florida. Even if he had stayed, even if he had coached the Gators to a national title last season, was it ever going to be good enough? We'll never know.

What we do know is that a classy man has been embraced at last.

Nobody except Zook believes that he could have coached them to a BCS crown, except that he claims he would have done it in 2005. But let's take a look at Zook's alleged "classiness".

From USA Today (October 19, 2004):

It's one thing to have a 4-2 record, it's quite another when the head coach confronts students in an intimidating manner and tone, one based on supposed privilege. Fraternity members say Zook said his players had more to lose than they did. And, as the players dispersed, one of them boasted, "We own this town," according to fraternity member Ari Bargil, who first approached Zook.

"I thought maybe he was here to extend an olive branch, so I said, 'What's going on, coach?' " Bargil said. "He looks right at me and says, 'Why don't you tell me what the (expletive deleted) is going on?' Just like that. The entire mood changed. We realized that, not only is he not ending it, he's stirring up a whole new pot."

One brewing with yelling, vulgarities and, yes, a very specific threat as the crowd of players dispersed. "He said, 'I don't know if I can do it, but I'm going to do everything in my power to get this place shut down,' " Bargil said. "He repeated it like five or six times. At the time, we didn't know what kind of pull he has here. We're thinking he's the third most powerful person at the school — president, AD, football coach."

So I guess confronting a bunch of students in front of their house is considered classy by Joe Henderson.

And then there's the classy act of elbowing a player because he committed a dumb personal foul:

And the culmination of classy is how Zook pushed a cameraman out of the way after the aforementioned loss to Iowa:



Much is being made of the possibility of Florida playing Illinois in either the Outback Bowl or the Capital One Bowl. I'd like to see it. You see in order to become a full fledged saint you need to have two miracles credited to you. So far Zook has one at Illinois. I suspect that he doesn't have a second one in him. Zook is no saint. He's a false prophet and for the Gators he was the Antichrist.

The Chosen One vs. the Antichrist, I like the sound of that.

UPDATE: I almost forgot about one of Zook's classiest moments. A long ago incident called faxgate. For those who aren't familiar, make sure to read this article about the matter which occurred in 1991 when Zook was an assistant at Florida:

A fired assistant coach who claimed the Vols made him the scapegoat for recruiting violations, faxed hand-drawn diagrams of offensive plays to Zook, a former UT assistant and a good friend of Sell, days before the game between the undefeated teams.

Sells sent drawn diagrams of plays, formations, audibles and quarterback cadence calls on 24 sheets of paper from a Kinko's copy center near the UT campus. An employee noticed what was written on the pages, stopped the transmission after 15 pages had been sent, and phoned the Tennessee athletics department.

Ah yes, class indeed.

H/T: JJ Gator