New Mexico Hires Illinois' Mike Locksley; Ron Zook Understates Something for Once

If you follow the coaching carousel at all, you already know the name Mike Locksley. He's been on everybody's "coordinators to watch" list for a couple seasons now, and he's been connected with almost as many jobs as Lane Kiffin and Will Muschamp.

Well, Ron Zook's offensive coordinator is headed to the Southwest. Monday, the University of New Mexico named him as their new head football coach. Locksley was due for a head coaching gig. While Illinois football this year had all the consistency of failed custard, the Illini offense got the job done. Locksley is also known as a top-notch recruiter, which had to please Paul Krebs, the Lobos' sheriff.

Locksley's hiring increases the number of African American head coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision from three to four. To put that in perspective, before yesterday one-fortieth of FBS programs had an African American head coach; now, one-thirtieth of them do. That's progress, but it's still a drop from the start of this past season, when we were all the way up to one-twentieth.

Time will tell how this move works out for the Lobos, but Locksley has a solid resume. The real question, however, is "What does this mean for Illinois?"

The people of Illinois probably have other things on their minds right now, but unless Ron Zook can come up with a new coordinator of equal quality, Illini faithful have to be concerned. Juice Williams, to the best of my Google-fu, hasn't said whether he's thinking about entering the NFL draft. You could understand, though, that he might not be enthusiastic about learning a new offensive system in what is supposed to be his showcase season.

Zook was publicly enthusiastic yesterday about Locksley's new opportunity:

''I'm very excited for Mike to have this opportunity,'' said Illinois coach Ron Zook, who had thought he might lose Locksley last winter. ''He's ready to take this next step. Locks is the whole package. He can coach, he can recruit and he can motivate his players. He did a tremendous job with our offense here and will be missed.''

Darn right he'll be missed. The arcade-game offense was about the only thing the Illini had going for them this season, and the list of players Locksley personally recruited to Champaign includes Arrelious Benn and Vontae Davis. Locksley is going to be hard to replace, and Zook would like to have something more to show for four years of Juice Williams than just an awful, lopsided Rose Bowl loss to USC.

The Illini fans would probably like to see a little more than Zook showed them this season, too.