Oct. 14, 1999

by Derrick Burson,
Illinois Athletic Public Relations

Glance over the Illinois football roster and one name keeps popping up: JACKSON. It's there not once, not twice, but three times. However, it's no misprint. Instead, the Illini have cornered the market on the Jackson family. Bobby and Marc line up on the defensive side of the ball, while their father, Robert, coaches the wide receivers. Wife and mother JoAnn is the only Jackson missing from the action, but she makes up for it on game day by attending by cheering on the rest of her family at Memorial Stadium.

It's truly a unique situation. As younger son, Marc, a freshman safety says, "I don't know of any other places that have three people from one family in the same football program." For the Jacksons, Illinois football has become a family affair.

Junior Bobby Jackson, also a safety, was the first to come to Champaign, as part of Head Coach Ron Turner's first recruiting class in 1997. He came via Corvallis, Ore., where he was a high school All-American. But the move to the Midwest was not a culture shock. The Jackson boys actually grew up in Illinois, in Matteson, while their father was a high school football coach at south suburban power Thornwood, and later, a receivers coach at Northern Illinois University. It was when Robert took a job with Oregon State University that the family moved out west.

Bobby played in all 11 games and started every game last season as an Illini freshman. During that same period of time, Turner and the UI football staff were on the recruiting trail of younger brother, Marc, who was making a name for himself as a high school All-American. It would have been easy for Bobby to put the heat on his brother and persuade him to come to Illinois, also. But Bobby instead took a different approach.

"What I tried to do for him was to get him to look at colleges in a different way," Bobby says. "Not to get caught up in the fact that he was being recruited by all the big name schools. Instead, to look closely at each school, because it's a choice he'd have to live with for the next four years. You want to go somewhere where you're going to play, and you're going to have fun doing it."

The advice and guidance Bobby provided was exactly what Marc needed. "On recruiting trips, you're only going to hear the good about every single little detail, but you won't ever hear the negative," Marc says. "Bobby helped me to look out for the negatives as well. He told me what a I needed to know, not what I wanted to hear."

At the same time as Marc was starring at the high school level and Bobby was proving to be one of Illinois' top underclassmen, Robert was offered a new position with Oregon State. There had been a head coaching change, which affected the entire staff. Jackson was the only one asked to stay on--as director of football operations.

Monitoring a budget and handling administrative work was not the ideal job for Robert, who proudly states, "I'm a football coach, there's nothing else that I would rather do." But Jackson was more concerned with Marc's future than with his own. So instead of taking a coaching job elsewhere and asking his son to start over at a new school , he stayed on as director of football operations, allowing Marc to finish his career at Crescent Valley High in Corvallis.

"As a dad, I had to do what a father has to do," Robert says. "It was a situation where Marc already had relationships established there and knew how to deal day-to-day where he was. He came first, before my career."

After the 1998 season, the receivers coaching position opened at Illinois when Buddy Teevens left for Florida. So in the final weeks of the recruiting period, when Marc was nearing his decision, the Illini were not only looking at recruits but also coaching candidates. There was no better man available than Jackson, and Turner went after him.

Illinois landed the Jackson daily-double when Marc committed and Robert accepted the coaching job.

"I knew he had a chance at getting the job, but officially he didn't accept it until about two or three weeks until after I committed," Marc recalls. "He came to me and told me about his opportunity, and I was excited for him because he loves coaching so much. I know he stayed at Oregon State pretty much because of me, so I said it was time for him to do what he wanted to do. I know how much he wanted to get back into coaching, I could see it in him."

Now the season is well underway and the Jackson family is firmly entrenched at the University of Illinois. It hasn't been a storybook ending, however, as Bobby hurt his knee in spring practice and had surgery in May. It is doubtful whether he will be able to suit up and play this season, but he knows it's only a matter of time before he and his brother will be in the defensive backfield together on Saturday afternoons.

"I'm still excited about it, I can't wait to get out there with him," Bobby says. "I still remember what it was like playing together in high school. Now I want to know what it will feel like at the collegiate level."

In the meantime, there is plenty of competition going on between father and sons. It's inevitable when two defensive safeties go against dad's receivers in practice.

"It makes for interesting talk at the dinner table, that's for sure," Marc says. "It's good, though, because it gives me something to strive for. I'll always be trying to beat my dad."

Robert also likes the "friendly competition" against his sons in practice. But he says what he'll enjoy the most about his new job will be watching his sons grow. "To have the opportunity to be a part of their lives at this stage of their careers, you can't put a price tag on it," Robert says. "This is the stage of their life when they go from young men to men, and to be able to experience that on a daily basis, it's priceless."