Where I Come From: My Favorite Illini Player, Jason Reda.

This post is sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011

No, not the most glamourous choice for my favorite football player, but I am personally limiting the options to players I have seen in person so that kind of eliminates  the likes of Dick Butkus, Jeff George, or Simeon Rice. No I chose Jason for fairly simple reason.

1. He was extremely good at kicking field goals.

2. He is a fellow Quad Citian (Represent)

3. We really haven't had a good field goal kicker since.

Jason Reda, aside from being the all time scoring leader for the Fighting Illini and growing up just one town over from me, Jason Reda deserves some recognition for sticking it out for so many years on an Illini team that mostly lost over his four year college career. In the last year of Ron Turner and the first two years of Ron Zook, Jason was on the winning side of games only seven times out of 36 games. Like J Leman and other talented Illini, he deserves credit for being one of the few bright spots on an otherwise very bleak landscape of Illini football.

But unlike Leman, or Mendenhall or even Pierre Thomas, (all perhaps equally as deserving of this designation) Reda was never rewarded with an NFL career for his hard work and talent.  He signed briefly with the Browns, but never made the 40 man roster, and has since stayed somewhat quiet, nationally speaking.

But placekicking in the NFL is a tough club to join, much like the Supreme Court, for those who finally make team, it can be a lifetime appointment, or it at least seems like as much. With guys like John Carney still playing as of last season, placekicking jobs open up very infrequently. But Niel Rackers has to retire eventually, maybe that will open up a spot for the last reliable kicker to have graced the field Champaign, who knows.

Until then, hats off to you Jason Reda.

Jason Reda is an Illini, and that is where he comes from.