Wisch: Zook Has To Wonder Where The Crowds Are
By Dave Wischnowsky –
(CBS) Football is a game of numbers.
But when it comes to the job security of Fighting Illini football coach Ron Zook, might it be a game of figures, as well?
Attendance ones, to be exact.
For the University of Illinois' home opener against Arkansas State on Sept. 3, the official attendance was announced as 45,154 at 60,670-seat Memorial Stadium with the true head count less than that.
Last week, when South Dakota State strolled in for Game No. 2, the announced attendance slipped to 42,212, although Champaign News-Gazette columnist Loren Tate wrote on Friday that insider talk around campus claimed this week that the actual turnstile count was far lower – perhaps less than 30,000 fans.
This evening at 6 p.m., Illinois (2-0) will welcome No. 22 Arizona State (2-0) to Memorial Stadium as the Illini gun for their first 3-0 start since the Big Ten championship season of 2001. Without a doubt, it's the biggest nonconference football game that Champaign has seen in eons.
Yet, according to the University of Illinois Ticketing Office, as of Friday afternoon the crowd was expected to be just over 50,000.
So, what's the deal?
Well, with eight home games this season – including one each of the first five weeks – I wasn't stunned when Illinois drew relatively paltry crowds for the Arkansas State and South Dakota State games. While the matchups were good ones for a bowl-starved program (two valuable wins), they were far from sexy. And I figured that with so many home games on the schedule, Illini football fans, a fairly fickle bunch, were likely to pick and choose their trips to early games this fall.
But I did figure that they'd show up in full-force tonight for a game under the lights against a nationally ranked opponent. And, who knows, perhaps they still will with walk-up ticket sales pushing the Memorial Stadium crowd to near capacity.
Although, I wouldn't count on that.
As for the reasons behind this apparent apathy – or, at the very least, the wait-and-see mentality – of Illinois fans this season, I'm not certain about all of them. But, clearly, Ron Zook's seventh team has failed to yet capture the imagination and interest of sizable swaths of Illini Nation.
And that ho-hum mood of the fan base could come back to bite Zook this winter, even if he does turn in a performance that results in a second straight bowl appearance.
After all, Illinois has a new athletic director this season in Mike Thomas, who surely wants to see bigger crowds with better energy. After the season opener, Thomas said: "You'd like to be playing in front of a full house. You can look at all of the different marketing pieces that hopefully would enhance those kind of crowds.
"But at the end of the day, it really comes down to winning and sustaining success and building a foundation that regardless of what your record is, people are going to show up and attend games at Memorial Stadium."
With Zook (Illini record: 30-45 overall, 16-32 Big Ten), winning has been elusive. And with Illinois football (no consecutive bowl games since 1991-92), sustained success has been even more so.
WIth eight home games and road trips only to Big Ten bottom-dwellers Indiana, Purdue and Minnesota, along with a game at Penn State, Illinois' schedule sets up very nicely this season. Barring complete disaster, the Fighting Illini should reach another bowl game.
But I'm not certain just qualifying for the postseason will be enough to ensure Zook has a job in Champaign again next fall – not if the crowds don't grow considerably this season, as well.
Last week, a sportswriter friend of mine asked me: "How can you fire a football coach who gets you to two straight bowl games when your program NEVER goes to two straight bowl games?"
And perhaps Thomas couldn't. It would certainly be controversial. But considering Zook's winning percentages (.400 overall, .333 Big Ten) and the fact that most observers credit the Illini's resurgence last season to the work of the new coordinators in offensive guru Paul Petrino and defensive whiz Vic Koenning, and not to the work of Zook, replacing the coach is hardly inconceivable.
Especially if Petrino starts getting head coaching offers from other schools this offseason and Illinois wants to keep him. And even more so if you throw in underwhelming attendance numbers at Memorial Stadium such as the ones we've seen so far this season.
After all, it's not as if Zook hasn't had time (seven years) to get the program on more stable footing. And one has to figure that Thomas would like to make his mark on the Illinois program sooner rather than later.
There's no bigger way to make a mark, of course, than by hiring a new football or basketball coach. And with the most favorable home schedule in school history on his plate, I'd say that Zook needs to go 8-4 at the very least to keep his job. If he's only 7-5 or 6-6, no matter if he makes a bowl game, the door to his exit could swing wide open.
That's unless the turnstiles at Memorial Stadium start spinning a lot more often.
If nothing else, Dave Wischnowsky is an Illinois boy. Raised in Bourbonnais, educated at the University of Illinois and bred on sports in the Land of Lincoln, he now resides on Chicago's North Side, just blocks from Wrigley Field. Formerly a reporter and blogger for the Chicago Tribune, Dave currently writes a syndicated column, The Wisch List, which you can check out via his blog at http://www.wischlist.com. Read more of his CBS Chicago blog entries here.
