Ron Zook/Illinois

[osugrad21]

Zook inching Illinois toward better season

July 30, 2007


CHAMPAIGN -- It's just over a month until Illinois kicks off its 2007 football season and Ron Zook is sitting in his office talking about possibilities.
Since Zook arrived in Champaign in 2005, the Illini have, as Zook promised they would, improved just a little each year. A two-win season with a lot of blowouts gave way to a two-win season with a lot of narrow losses.
But on this late-July afternoon, Zook isn't talking about little steps. Leaning far forward in a lounge chair not more than 50 yards from the Memorial Stadium turf -- scene of a lot of Illini infamy -- Zook is talking big. Sort of.
"You know the first time Florida won the Southeastern Conference?" he asks a visitor. "(It was) 1991. I was there. It ain't been very long, 16 years."
If it can happen there, he almost says but doesn't, why not here?



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