On Jan. 1, the Fighting Illini will take on USC in the Rose Bowl.

Wait, let me say that again. The Illini are going to the Rose Bowl.

The Illini are going to the Rose Bowl.

I’ve been a student here since 2002. I gave up hope after the team went 13-45 between then and last season. It was never going to happen for Illini football, I feared. The basketball team’s perennial appearance in March Madness was going to have to sate my thirst for college athletics.

It still doesn’t feel like the 2007 football season is for real. It feels like the whole campus is high on the sort of high-powered narcotics available only to level-9 glaucoma patients or the select few who know the location of the campus’ secret drug retail locations (also referred to as “dorms”).

We long-term Illini fans have suffered through too many seasons of bad football to feel comfortable with the team’s newfound quality. I have nightmares that something will ruin it, like maybe the NCAA will give Jon Beutjer or Tim Brasic an extra year of eligibility, or Rashard Mendenhall will be summoned to heaven on a chariot of fire.

But it’s really happening. The Illini have a quarterback who averages fewer than one interception per pass attempt. We have a Devin Hester-esque wideout who is still only a freshman. We have a middle linebacker too talented to use 83 percent of the letters in his first name. We went on the road and defeated then-and-now-top-ranked Ohio State, a team so good its fans show up to games despite its mascot being a giant nut from the buckeye tree. (And you thought the Stanford Cardinal was dumb.)

Five years ago, when I was a freshman, the only good thing to happen at Memorial Stadium was the sale of beer. (The Bears played home games in Champaign that season and the city altered its alcohol laws accordingly.) It was a tough year to be an Illini fan, especially because, one season prior, the team reached the pinnacle of college athletics by scoring 34 points in the Sugar Bowl. (Who cares if LSU scored 47?)

It’s been a long dry spell. Perhaps the most frustrating part was that I knew exactly how the team could improve itself, but of course nobody took my advice. “STOP THROWING INTERCEPTIONS!” I would yell directly at the players, via the two-way radio link implanted in my television. “TACKLE SOMEBODY!”

The program needed to be overhauled. A couple of years ago the school named a new head coach with a reputation as one of the best at recruiting and, more important, winning: Knute Rockne. But it turned out Rockne died in 1931 and was, as of 2005, still dead, so Ron Zook was hired instead. Zook’s first strategic shift made an immediate impact, when he instructed the team to no longer fumble the ball on every third down.

From there, it played out like a 1990s PG sports movie. The dumpy team with the tradition of failure, just when it looked lost beyond the shadow of a hope, turned itself around. Zook recruited players too good to commit to a program as bad as ours. He was like the Washington Wizards convincing Michael Jordan to give basketball another shot.

He went against traditional recruiting wisdom by signing a player named “Juice,” because guys with that moniker have a higher-than-average history of going on low-speed car chases in white Ford Broncos. He snagged future Hall-of-Fame cornerback Vontae Davis, despite Davis’ initials being the same as the term for a class of illnesses more commonly associated with the Indiana University student body. Things picked up. The unit played well when it worked together. It started beating ranked opponents.

The only things missing were Rick Moranis and a soundtrack performed by Queen.

Now 9-3, the Little Team That Could is headed for a New Year’s game, to face the USC Trojans in the Rose Bowl.

The Illini are going to the Rose Bowl.

I’ll never get tired of writing that.

Scott Green is a second-year law student. He can be reached at [email protected]