By Mike Pearson
FightingIllini.com
Coach Ron Turner's University of Illinois football family hosted Illini fans for an extra special Thanksgiving Day celebration in 2001, but instead of serving turkey and all the fixings the guys dressed in orange and blue dished up a tasty slice of Big Ten Championship pie.
The Thanksgiving Day matchup wasn't originally on the 2001 schedule, but the devastating events at the Twin Towers in New York on Sept. 11, 2001 college football postponed all games played that following weekend. In 1999, Memorial Stadium became the home of the IHSA football playoffs, so Thanksgiving Thursday was the best date for the season finale rivalry with the Northwestern Wildcats.
Heading into the 2001 campaign, an air of optimism floated around Illinois's program. Forty-seven letterwinners, including 13 starters, were returning from a 5-6 squad. One of them, then senior middle linebacker Jerry Schumacher, was especially hopeful about his team's prospects.
"Absolutely, we felt confident," Schumacher said. "With Coach Turner, we felt like we could win any game. We had a whole corps of guys coming back. It was a group that all got along and bought into the system."
On the offensive side of the ball, receiver Brandon Lloyd eagerly anticipated 2001, but it was more so for personal reasons. He'd had to sit out the 2000 season with a broken femur and he was itching to get back on the field.
"We had beaten Michigan and Ohio State, so the team had a lot of confidence after the '99 season (8-4 record)" Lloyd said. "In 2000, I'm out that year, but the team was very competitive. Coming into the 2001 season, we were still the very overconfident kids from 1999. I recall that the younger athletes that came to Illinois were wondering 'Is Brandon Lloyd really as good as he thinks he is?' That was always my motivation, so I was just chomping at the bit. I was about ready to spontaneously combust in anticipation to get out on the field."
Lloyd had a sensational game in the '01 season opener at Cal, catching eight passes for 178 yards and two touchdowns, helping the Illini convincingly beat the Golden Bears. The team continued to roll in games two and three against Northern Illinois and 25th-ranked Louisville.
Game four was at Michigan against the No. 10 Wolverines, but the Illini stumbled to their first and what would turn out to be their only loss of the regular season.
In the fifth game, Illinois topped Minnesota, 25-14, and momentum began to build. Next came a 21-point victory at Indiana, then a dramatic 42-35 win over Wisconsin when quarterback Kurt Kittner hit Lloyd with a game-winning 22-yard touchdown pass late in the game.
Lloyd remembers he and his QB having a very unique relationship.
"Kurt was always the great neutralizer between how I was going to behave and how I was going to stay focused on the task at hand," Lloyd said. "We lived together. Kurt knew me very, very well, and that's what it came down to. Saying we were best friends isn't what I'm getting at, because we weren't. He knew me well and I knew him well. On the field, we knew what we were good at and not good at, and we got along. We were nice to one another, and that was a big step in our relationship."
Illinois had significant victories in games eight, nine and 10, winning 38-13 at No. 15 Purdue, slipping by Penn State at home (33-28) on Rocky Harvey's last-minute TD, then beating No. 25 Ohio State (34-22) at Columbus.
Now came the season finale at Memorial Stadium against Northwestern. Though the Wildcats were only 4-6 and in the midst of a five-game losing streak, Schumacher knew it wouldn't be easy.
"We had played terribly against Northwestern the year before," said Schumacher, referring to a 61-23 defeat in 2000. "They had Zac Kustok. He was a senior quarterback so we were quite familiar with him. Though they had a losing record, Northwestern was putting points on the board. They wanted to knock us out of a Big Ten championship."
Thanks to Kittner's TD passes to Brian Hodges and Walter Young, the Illini led the Wildcats 17-13 at halftime. It was all Illinois in the third quarter, scoring seventeen unanswered points to take a 34-13 lead.
In the fourth quarter, Kustok led a Northwestern charge with touchdown passes of 25 and 41 yards to close the margin to six. Schumacher, who'd notched 15 tackles against the Wildcats, knew what was on the line.
"We were like okay, now it's time to buckle down," he said. "Let's get our offense the ball so that they can run the clock out and be done."
On Northwestern's final possession, Illini defensive lineman Brandon Moore's QB pressure and smothering coverage by Christian Morton, Eugene Wilson and Muhammad Abdullah caused four straight incomplete passes, resulting in a 34-28 victory and a share of the Big Ten championship for Illinois.
"That was the first time I had won at anything in a team sport," said Lloyd, "so that was a special moment for me."
No. 6 was especially happy for the Illini senior class that celebrated on the stage that was set up at midfield.
"It was the best bunch of leaders a young player could ask for," Lloyd said. "They were so mature. There was Luke Butkus and the family legacy he was representing. Kurt Kittner and the way he was raised with a single mother. Bobby Jackson, the oldest son and a very talented leader. That's just to name a few, but those three were the most important individuals that shaped my underclass days. Their life experiences carried over into the way they led off the field. These guys were true student-athletes. That's what was so special about those guys."
Schumacher idolized his seniors, too.
"Seeing Luke, Kurt, Bobby, all of them up on the stage holding that trophy, knowing what they'd gone through made it all worthwhile," he said.
To win the conference title outright, though, Illinois would need some help from Ohio State two days later in the Buckeyes' Saturday contest at Michigan. It turned out to be a particularly unusual viewing party at the Schumacher household.
"My dad (Jerry Sr.) played at Michigan, so we were a big Michigan family," Schumacher said. "I remember that's the only time we ever rooted for Ohio State as a family. We hate Ohio State, no matter what, so it's the only time my dad ever cheered for Ohio State."
The Buckeyes' 26-20 victory provided Illinois with the absolute title, but because the Bowl Championship Series had tabbed the Rose Bowl to be the sight for the national championship game the Illini were instead selected for the Sugar Bowl. For one, Schumacher was disappointed that he wasn't going to Pasadena.
"Since my dad played in two Rose Bowls, I thought it would be nice for me to play in one," he said. "As a kid, nearly every January 1st we would have a Rose Bowl party because Michigan almost always was in it. Personally, I wanted to play in the Rose Bowl more than anything."
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Where they are today:
Brandon Lloyd lives in Denver and works in medical device sales for Zimmer Biomet. He has two sons.
Jerry Schumacher resides in Chicago and is a sales representative for an HVAC mechanical company. He and his wife have two daughters.
