Every season the sights and sounds of the Illinois football team are typically the same: the orange, the blue, the marching band and the thousands of screaming college students. With the success of the 2007 season that ended with a surprising run to the Rose Bowl, football fanatics have been rushing to get their latest Illini fix.

The “Zook Zone” towel is the newest way for Illini Nation to connect with head coach Ron Zook and his 2008 campaign. Only available at Gameday Spirit, Illini athletic officials hope the orange “spirit” towel will represent more than just wiping off a wet bench at Memorial Stadium.

“The towel is a symbol of team,” explained Chris Hanna, assistant athletics director for sales and marketing.

“If you have the towel in your hand … you’re helping our football student-athletes win and defend their home turf. (It will be) raising the stature of Illinois and our community. All of those things all play into everybody being a part of the same team.”

Though waving a towel will not make the team score more touchdowns or tackle more opponents, its presence will help another worthwhile cause. One dollar from every towel purchased will go to Coaches vs. Cancer. After the success of the pink T-shirts for the basketball team’s Midnight Madness last fall, the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics decided another philanthropic souvenir should be used during the football season.

“I like that they have the charitable side in it,” said Ryan Mroz, vice president of Block I. “If we can do something every year to make Illinois a little more unique, I think that’d be good.”

As Mroz enters his fourth year in Block I, he believes the towels will impact the student section. The group is planning to buy between 250 and 300 towels to hand out on game day.

Mroz hopes use of the towel can be integrated into all of the other student traditions and change the appearance of the north end zone during home games.

“It will be a great sight,” he said. “We will be having more nationally televised games and it sets everything apart a little bit, especially in the student section. If nothing else, if you see a couple thousand orange towels flying in the end zone it will affect the other team.”

Cory Shumard, manager of Gameday Spirit in Campustown, has already been hitting his target market with the towels. As the official merchandiser of the Illinois athletic department, Gameday positioned the towels outside of the store throughout the move-in weekend and during Quad Day.

This week alone, the store will receive a shipment of 20,000 towels, with a large portion being sent to St. Louis to be sold before the Arch Rivalry game this Saturday against Missouri.

“I expect a lot (of towels) to be there at the first game, and I think between the first and second home game, I think that might be when our sales really peak,” Shumard said.

Most any football fan can recognize the similarity between the Zook Zone towel and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ “Terrible Towels.”

Hanna believes this addition to Illinois football will give Memorial Stadium a unified atmosphere and an intimidating edge over the competition.

“We wanted to come up with a look that represented our football program,” Hanna said. “We wanted something strong, like football.”