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Behind the Mic

Media Day Arrives

Posted by: Brian Barnhart

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 11:20 AM

A few observations about Football Media Day 2009

*They adjusted the format of Media Day slighlty....3 x 15 minute breaks in between all the mini-press conferences that lasted from 10 am until 2 pm....I liked that.

*Ron Zook did another solid job at the podium. Zook got the anticpated questions about who the starting running back will be...the depth at reciever.......Juice Williams being a senior.... and what happened to the team after the Rose Bowl season. He also got a couple of questions about comparing the Big Ten and the SEC...which was very common the first couple of years he was at Illinois after coaching at Florida. But that particular question from the Midwestern media seems to me like a stale question now...since Ron is starting his 5th year in Champaign this fall..

*Coach Zook didnt have to go first at the podium this year as he had done in past years. Pat Fitzgerald got the honor of going first and did a nice job touting the Northwestern program. BTW...did you know Illinois and Northwestern might be playing a Northwestern home game at Wrigley Field? (They are trying to work out the details.)

*The most fired up coach at Media Day was former Illini Tim Brewster...now of course the head man for Minnesota's Golden Gophers. He has reasons to be excited....an up and coming program and a brand new outdoor on-campus football stadium. Brewster mentioned that Minnesota is toughening up the schedule...... with USC starting a home-and-home series with the Gophers next year. He even was promoting the fact that the cold late-fall weather in outdoor Minneapolis will be an advantage for the Gohpers. Another BTW....The Illini play in Minneapolis in early November.

*I missed Joe Tiller of Purdue this year. He always rolled into Media Day in Chicago fresh off a fishing trip in Wyoming or somewhere ...and had the media chuckling at his down-to-earth approach to press conferences. New coach Danny Hope is a good coach and will do a nice job with the Boilermakers and he does have a mustache like Tiller...but Tiller was a unique personality.

*And...as usual ....Joe Paterno had the most attentive audience of all the coaches. There was no questions this year about retirement...although someone asked what keeps him coming back to coaching year after year (He said he just really enjoys it)...Paterno didnt get into too many specifics...but JoePa did make a pretty funny reference to the new communication process of "Twitter". Paterno laughingly referred to Twitter as "Twiddle-do" or Twiddle-dee"...admitting that he was new to the whole "Twitter" world.

All in all...a fun day......