Mr. G Blog

Fan Letter To Mr. G Monday, December 14, 2009

Mr. G,

 

 I listened to your recorded show last night and enjoyed the program. 1-3 p.m. Alaska Time isn’t the best time for me to be sitting around with my feet on the desk listening to the radio, but I’ll try to listen again sometime.

 

The thing I liked most about the program is that your comments about Illinois football and the coaching have been my sentiments for a long time. Zook just isn’t a very good teacher or coach and his teams tend to be sloppy, undisciplined, prone to mistakes, poor at fundamentals and inconsistent in execution. Other than that, I don’t dislike the guy the way I dislike Charlie Weis or Bob Knight. But you said it best in your comment yesterday to Gould that he wouldn’t be working for long if his grammar sucked. Likewise, Zook has no business coaching D-1 football team. Florida figured that out pretty quickly and Guenther apparently didn’t get the memo.

 

 

 I met John Hiebert recently on the Illinois Loyalty blog site. The songs and lyrics burst forth in just a few weeks this fall as a frustrated emotional response to the awful football season. Another friend of mine (who is an Illini fan) and I have been writing silly, sophomoric lyrics to famous songs for a long time and exchanging them by email We posted some on the Illinois Loyalty Website in September. John asked if he could mix and record the songs. He did a brilliant job and suddenly we’re famous. Do you think WLS is interested? John and I have never met in person even though only 23 people live in Alaska. We’ve only exchanged emails and music lyrics because it is too cold and dark to go out and see your neighbors. We have vowed to get together to watch a game at a bar, but as the football season progressed, it didn’t sound like much fun. So far, the basketball games have not been on TV here or have been at bad times. We’ll get together before the season is over, I hope.

 

 John sort of fumbled your question about my background because he doesn’t know it. I grew up in Champaign and attended my first year at the U of I. I was a townie. My parents still live there. I am from a long line of Illini alums. My mother and father met at Illinois. My father played basketball on the Final Four Team of 1949. His construction company built a number of buildings on campus, including the Assembly Hall. My grandfather, Paul Bresee and his brother Tiz, were the announcers at the football and basketball games for many, many years. All of my Grandfather’s four brothers and sisters graduated from the U of I. Many of their children and grandchildren have attended the University. One of my mother’s sisters married the son of the then-President of the University, David D. Henry. My mother’s other sister married the son of the head of all of the Illini bands for many years, Mark Hindsley.

 

 When I was young, I didn’t know the difference between college and professional sports. I thought that the Illini belonged to Champaign-Urbana, the way that the Bulls, Bears and Cubs belong to Chicago. I just assumed they played in the same leagues. My grandmother taught me what the line of scrimmage was. When I was in second grade, my sister and I used to play hoops on the neighbor’s driveway and pretend we were Illinois players. I could hardly get the ball to the rim shooting underhanded. My sister was always Dave Downy and I was Bill Burwell. It never dawned on me than that Burwell was a 6’9 black man and I was a 4’2 tow-headed white kid from a white bread neighborhood. Illinois sports transcended race and all other considerations when I was a kid. The slush fund scandal broke on my 13thbirthday—December 23, 1966. Most of my generation remembers when John Kennedy was killed as the end of the age of innocence. For me it was the slush fund scandal and my 13th birthday.

 

 Despite my Illinois pedigree, I was a prodigal. After my freshman year I hitchhiked to Fairbanks, Alaska and decided to attend the University of Alaska. This was the Hippie era. I’ve been an Alaskan ever since, other than my three years of law school at Rutgers University, Camden. I still get back to Chicago and Champaign on a regular basis. I have a sister who lives in Deerfield. I still wear my Orange and Blue and follow the teams regularly. My wife thinks I’m a glutton for punishment and doesn’t understand my loyalty. You can take the boy out of Illinois but you can’t take the Illini out of the boy.

 

 As a topic of discussion, I’d love to hear your take on Illinois sports budget. I read that Illinois ranks 10thin the Big 10 in its sports budget. Only Northwestern spends less. My question is, does the administration really care about Illinois sports, in general and football in particular. Does Illinois really want to field a national caliber football team? Based upon my 50 years of watching the program, the current spending levels, the decision to discard the Chief, the constant turnover in the head football coaching position, the distrust of the athletic department stemming from the slush fund scandal, and the general “anti-jock” attitude of the faculty, I don’t think that the school cares whether we go 3-9, 6-6, or 8-4 so long as people buy tickets and give donations. So if the administration doesn’t care and isn’t trying to be national caliber team, why should the fans care so much? I’d like to have your perspective on this. You obviously eat, sleep, speak, drink and dream Illini sports. Don’t you feel a little duped by the school? Don’t you wish that the University of Illinois as an institution supported football the same way that it is supported at OSU, Penn State, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, FSU, Alabama, Miami, Boise State, and USC just to name a few?

 

Regards,

 

Richard

Posted 15 Dec | 0 Comments