To most people, Jim Bennett appeared to be a young man with a golden arm and a glittering future.
It was a glorious image. Bennett, who passed for 22 touchdowns and almost 2,000 yards three years ago as a senior at West Aurora High School, was to be the next great quarterback at Illinois, the heir apparent to the throne once occupied by Tony Eason and Jack Trudeau. He was coach Mike White`s ”choice,” and Illini coaches told Bennett that they never made a mistake about a quarterback.
This time, however, they couldn`t read the mind of a young man confused by the pressures and demands of big-time college football and concerned about his own ability.
”I knew I could never be as good or as polished a quarterback as Jack Trudeau was,” Bennett says. ”Even if I was the No. 1 quarterback after spring practice, I think I was afraid I would fail.”
That`s one reason why Bennett decided in August to quit the team and drop out of school before his junior year.
Bennett says he knew what he was doing. ”A lot of people–family, friends and coaches–told me I`d better not leave, but I knew I couldn`t live for them. I had to make my own choice.”
Today, 20-year-old Jim Bennett lives at home and works for Illinois Storage Systems, a locker and storage distributor in Addison. He wants people to know he`s doing well. He sees opportunities in business in the years ahead. ”But I miss not competing,” he admits.
Football wasn`t the only problem he encountered at Illinois, but it was the primary one. ”High school football always was fun for me,” he says. ”It stopped being fun in college. It became monotonous drudgery. There was always more work I had to do.”
He calls it ”the grind.
Even in the off-season, he recalls, there never seemed to be any let-up. And during the fall, there was always the constant rigors of practice, meals, film study and more film study.
”I was a `B` student in high school, but when I committed to Illinois, I didn`t commit academically,” he says. ”It got to the point where I was being forced to make up classes in summer school all the time, classes I didn`t study for during the season.”
When Bennett arrived at Illinois in the fall of 1984, Trudeau was a junior, and Bennett was awed by his poise and his ability to read defenses.
”He had such a command of the game that I knew I could never be that good,” Bennett says.
Bob Gambold, the quarterback coach at Illinois and the man who recruited Bennett, understands those fears. ”When Trudeau spent his redshirt year on the sidelines, he, too, marveled at what Tony Eason could do,” Gambold says. ”But once you take command, it is a different story.”
Bennett first decided to leave school in the summer of 1985, after his freshman year. But two days later, he decided to return after listening to family, friends and his high school coach, John Wrenn.
”They said I would be letting a lot of people down,” Bennett recalls.
”Maybe I came back because I felt a little guilty about that. But I think even then I doubted my ability to play. Coaches tell you a lot of things in college. Heck, it`s a million-dollar business and this is an investment they make in you.”
”Going away to college is a big adjustment to make,” says Gambold. ”So is playing Big 10 football. You can`t just step in and do it. We tried to tell Jim he was a good player, but he spent one hour on the field and 10 hours off the field. I don`t think he had a fear of playing, but he kept on thinking about all the things he had to do.”
One of the few times Bennett says he felt at ease was when he finally told White of his decision to leave last August. ”It was the first time we talked that it wasn`t an instructor-student kind of thing,” says Bennett.
”He told me I could have a scholarship if I ever decided to come back.”
Bennett came close to quitting football after his junior year at West Aurora, when the Blackhawks finished 2-7. He was a wishbone quarterback, and not a very successful one. The following spring, he excelled in baseball, posting a 10-2 record with a 1.10 earned run average.
”The reason I came back to football was that I had nothing to do during the fall and that Coach Wrenn had installed a passing offense,” he says. ”I thought I could have some fun playing. That year I worked harder than I ever have, but I always enjoyed it.”
His senior year, Bennett completed 117 of 201 passes and led West Aurora to an 8-2 record. Suddenly, his name was on everyone`s lips. ”I even had a color picture in The Tribune,” he recalled. ”Everything happened quickly.” Illinois went after one high school quarterback, and that was Bennett. College recruiters whispered sweet words in his ear, and he loved it.
”It was ego,” he says. ”I think everything I heard went to my head. A lot of people were telling me a lot of things.”
Wrenn, now the coach at Homewood-Flossmoor, vividly recalls those days.
”Jim seemed to lack confidence. He never seemed to believe that he could be as good as people told him he was.”
Illinois, Indiana and Iowa State seemed to be the three finalists. But Bennett acknowledges he never really intended to go to Iowa State. ”Why go there and play against teams like Oklahoma and Nebraska every year?” he says. The Illini beat Indiana simply because they could beat the Hoosiers on the field.
”That year Illinois was going to the Rose Bowl, and the coaches told me they wanted to tie up the quarterback position and wanted to know what I was going to do,” Bennett says. ”I decided I would tell them I would go to Illinois. That was all there was to it.”
Not quite.
Perhaps if Bennett had had a different roommate at Illinois, things might have been different. But his roommate, Steve Brazas of Newport Beach, Calif., who was supposed to be the starting fullback, left before the middle of his freshman year. Brazas was disenchanted with the school and the system.
”It was such a big adjustment for me to make,” Bennett says. ”I chose Illinois for a lot of reasons. Ego, the reputation of the school, closeness to home and the education I could get. If I left, I would let a lot of people down.”
”There is no doubt that the Illinois program was hurt when Jim left,”
says Wrenn. ”I know I was close to him and tried to give him advice, but he seemed to be an unhappy individual then. Maybe I was living a dream through him. I could never be a quarterback who could throw the winning touchdown pass, but he was.”
After leaving Illinois, Bennett thought of transferring to Waubonsee Junior College near Aurora or Aurora University, but then decided to go to work.
”I didn`t want to add gas to the fire,” he says. ”I had to get away from it. Now this job seems to be a good opportunity for me and I have to weigh that against other things.”
He`s ambivalent about college. Education is fine, ”but how much will it help me if I want to go into business?” he says. And ”if I go back, will I ever have a chance to play pro ball?”
”I wish him all the best,” says Gambold. ”I have a feeling he will play football again somewhere.”
Despite all the mental anguish, Jim Bennett thinks if he had it to do all over again, he would make the same choices. There would be ”a great chance I would still play football if I had to do it over again. And I`m 90 percent sure I would have gone to Illinois.”
