Rashard Mendenhall Is Not a Big Fan of Ron Zook

The 2007 football season was a great one for the Illini. After winning only two games the season before, none of which came against a Big Ten opponent, the Illini bounced back in 2007 and ended up playing USC in the Rose Bowl. Yeah, they got their ass kicked, but the season still had to be considered a success.

God knows it was a success for running back Rashard Mendenhall, who after spending his first two seasons in Champaign keeping the bench from getting lonely, exploded onto the scene in 07 and ended up being a first round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

So you have to figure Rashard has very fond memories of Champaign, right? Wrong. Apparently Rashard isn't that big a fan of the coach who helped turn the program around.

"Everything always looks good on the outside," Mendenhall said. "Nobody really knows except for the people who are there and involved with it. The only thing being on the outside that you can know is what people allow you to know from talking to me or from talking to (Ron) Zook or anybody within the organization."

Bottom line for Mendenhall was that he didn't enjoy the season the way you think he might have.

"When you find things that were said, you can kind of read between the lines and see that everything wasn't as it appeared to be," Mendenhall said.

Mendenhall's current relationship with the Illinois football program can best be described as strained. You won't see him on the sidelines of Illinois games during the upcoming season. Or in future years either.

"To tell you the truth, as long as Ron Zook is there it will be hard for me to support the University of Illinois football team," Mendenhall said.

Reached Saturday afternoon, Zook said "I feel bad that he feels that way."

I've no idea where Rashard's feelings towards Zook come from, but in the article it does say that he was very close to quitting the team before the 2007 season started, but that his brother Walter convinced him to stay on the team.

The same Walter who just transferred from Illinois to Illinois State.

Maybe the reason Rashard, who has openly supported his brother in the media and said he should get more playing time, is that Zook wasn't planning on using Walter very much this season. Maybe Rashard's just bitter about having to spend all that time on the bench his first two seasons.

Whatever it is, he should probably just move on and get over it. Whatever the hell Zook did, it's ended with Rashard making millions of dollars in the NFL, and the Illini football program on the verge of becoming a Big Ten power. To me, it seems like everybody wins.