Points pondered after watching TV for 3 hours 43 minutes as Ohio State dismantled Oregon in the college football championship game last week Monday, and not once seeing Buckeyes QB Cardale Jones throw a pass to our own Evan Spencer, the Buckeyes’ senior wideout from Vernon Hills High School.
1) Probably need you to pass this along to some high school math genius, who likely will be able to come up with a calculation on this:
What are the odds that two football players from Lake County high schools would play in the NCAA championship football game in two of the past three years; and what are the odds that those players were teammates and classmates during their prep days at Vernon Hills High.
DaVaris Daniels played for Notre Dame when it lost Alabama in the championship game after the 2012 season, and Spencer, of course, played for the champion Buckeyes last Monday night.
2) When Ohio State beat Oregon to win the title Spencer became the first Lake County high school grad to be a member of the NCAA Division 1 championship team since …
Well, this is a sticky one.
In 2004, Lake Forest High grad John Zilka was a member of the Southern California Trojans football team that won the national title by slaughtering Oklahoma 55-19 in the Orange Bowl to finish the year 13-0.
One of the stars of that team was running back Reggie Bush, and years after the title was won, the NCAA took the title away from USC for a laundry list of violations. So, if you look up the list of national champs during the Bowl Championship Series Era, the 2004 year is listed as “vacant.”
Still, on game night, USC played and won, so on that night, it was recognized as the champion.
Zilka played at Lake Forest High during the era when Willie Snead was the head coach.
Zilka’s senior season at Lake Forest was ruined during Week 3 when he was injured. Not ready to give up football, then-coach Snead helped Zilka get invited onto the USC team as a walk-on and also helped him train for the college game.
Though a practice player throughout his USC career, Zilka did get on the field for the Orange Bowl game against Iowa in 2003.
So, if you don’t want to count Zilka on the grounds that USA was caught cheating, then you have to go back to the 1997 season, and even this one is not a nice, neat, clean championship.
That year, Michigan ran the table, going 12-0 and ending its season with a 21-16 win over Washington State in the Rose Bowl.
But back in those days, the national champion was crowned by the AP (sportswriters) and UPI (football coaches) polls.
The AP poll had unbeaten Michigan at No. 1, but the UPI poll had undefeated Nebraska at N. 1, so the title was shared.
On that Michigan title team was freshman linebacker Robert Fraumann from Deerfield High. He went on to have a nice career playing that defensive spot for the Wolverines.
Continue Reading: Evan Spencer’s our first NCAA football champ since …
