Illinois QB leaves team
Jacob Charest took his ball and went home to North Carolina, leaving redshirt freshman Nathan Scheelhasse as the Illini's starter.
Well, that should help us win that game.
You would think. But after last year I don't take anything for granted.
and no more make-sweet-love-to-your-body looks while posing seductively in his Illini uniform in Korea.
has been busy today...
Given our run of luck lately, Eddy McGee will probably run for 6 TD's as the WR playing wildcat QB.
Well, he lasted twice as long as the cancelled BTN series "Return to Glory" that featured the Illinois team with the Zooker coaching fresh off its Rose Bowl appearance and hoping for more in the future.
Hey! That's "fresh off its 9-4 season, non-Big-10-Championship Rose Bowl apprearance" to you....
Only Illini fans call it a "Rose Bowl Appearance" -- then they quickly change the subject so you don't ask them if it was because:
1) They won the Big 10
2) Because they were 9-3 and deserving; and/or
3) Proved they belonged in a BCS bowl because they got embarrassed by a legit BCS team
Michigan didn't win the Big Ten in 2006 but played in the 2007 Rose Bowl. Now, UM did go 11-1, but they also got beat up pretty good in the second half against USC. Should we not count that as a Rose Bowl appearance for UM?
Well, losing 32-18 (although admittingly worse than the score) is still better than losing 49-17. We were tied with USC at half and were within 8 until w/ about 10 minutes left in the game. Just gave up some big plays and our offense failed to make any. Illinoise was out of it by the second quarter.
9-3 belongs in the Outback Bowl or Gator Bowl. Never in the BCS.
In 2006 Michigan was a great team... with a bad loss.
Illinois was merely a "good" team with a completely predictable beat-down.
So, yes, we should count 2006 season a Rose Bowl Season. Much like OU and Texas can count theirs' as well. All great teams that got invited because the traditional Big 10/Pac 10 was not available due to USC and OSU being in the champ game.
Illinois, however, never should of been invited --- and did nothing before the game to suggest otherwise, and did nothing during the game to suggest otherwise.
(It did get UM up to the Cap One Bowl to face Florida in Carr's last game... so thank you so much for being a Paper Tiger Illini nation....)
So tell me this - which BCS-qualified team should have gotten in above Illinois? A lot of people forget that the distribution of good teams was unbalanced that year and there weren't a lot of decent candidates. The rest is just hindsight.
It should've been Michigan. Screw out of conference games, we had the same in conference record and beat them head-to-head AT Illinois while we were completely decimated with injuries and they were 100% healthy.
Yes there is a lot of hindsight in this argument. Many teams had 3 losses (and the BCS game was two 2-loss teams). Filling that emply spot in the Rose Bowl was not easy that year.
However, BYU was 10-2 and on a 9 game win streak at the end of the year. After seeing Boise St., Utah, and TCU show everyone the last few years that they are more than deserving to be in the big games... I think, in hindsight, a 10-2 nine-straight-win BYU team should of played.
After BYU, Illinois was no more deserving than a slew of BCS conference teams... the traditional Big 10/Pac 10 pairing gave them the advantage.
Since that game (IIRC, within the next few months) the Rose Bowl has changed its agreement and now will take a top-12 non-BCS team over any other team if there is a vacancy.
to be fair, the BCS Championship was not two 2-loss teams, as OSU only had one loss going in, and that was, of course, to Illinois (in Columbus).
The only team that should have gotten in to a BCS game that year but did not was Missouri (who only had 2 losses and was ranked #1 going into the Big 12 title game), but they could not because Oklahoma and Kansas were also in BCS games. To be fair to Illinois and the Rose Bowl, remember, this is also the year that Hawaii made it to the Sugar Bowl and got destroyed by Georgia.
+1 for "should have" - not normally a grammar cop, but that drives me nuts. "Of" is not a verb.
Isn't Eddie McGee still around? I know he converted to wide receiver, but he might be able to switch...
I always thought McGee was better then Juice from what I saw in his limited playing time.
but when I watched the Illini play Purdue the week before us, Juice seemed to throw an awful lot of passes that bounced off the hands of the his receivers. Could have just been that game, though.
He will at least see reps in practice as QB to make him ready as a back-up in case the frosh gets injured. If nothing else, he may be ever so slightly less effective as a WR as a result.
I can't post new information yet - but there are new photos of Michigan Stadium at http://www.mgoblue.com/view.gal?id=70482
I really like the "Hall of Fame" looking things on the concourse.
The new kid is supposed to be pretty good.
"Jacob Charest took his ball and went home to North Carolina, leaving walkon Nick Sheridan as the starting quarterback"
Sheridan did as best he could, he just wasn't up to the task. No need to continuously mock him.
He gave everything he had. If he was the starting QB at Illinois this year, I would feel a lot better about our chances due to his lack of skill--not his effort.
First of all, Zook has been an idiot since the day he ranked 2006 Michigan #4 behind OSU, Florida, and Arkansas that effectively kept Michigan out of the Championship game that year (we missed the vote by so little that a #3 vote would've put us against OSU as the BCS title game, but Zook's response was "Nobody wants to see a rematch.") He was the only person in the country to rank the Wolverines lower than #3.
Secondly, just to get the facts straight he had a sophomore Juice at QB during the Rose Bowl trip. Then he had a disappointing junior year from Juice before doing all the crazy QB-shuffling he did last year. He gave Juice a full year after the Rose Bowl to prove he wasnt that bad, and he apparently didn't pass the test.
. . . and the "#4 team" promptly lost to USC in the Rose Bowl. Not sure why that's such a travesty.
that would mean that Zook put the 10-3 Razorbacks (complete with a 50-14 loss to USC) at #3 over the Wolverines, which would indeed be absurd.
the Zooker was an idiot before 2006.
I'm not really worried about Illinois passing game. Petrino is a solid coordinator, but we need to slow down Leshoure if we want to dominate them and get the W.
We all know what it's like to have freshmen QB's with no game experience.. they're going to go through the same thing.
Nathan Scheelhasse was already named the starter, so this is no biggie for them unless he gets hurt. He was pretty highly regarded out of high school and he is a redshirt, so they might be okay. Illinois's defense is going to be awful though.