Illinois football coach Ron Zook will receive a quarter of a million dollar raise for beating Baylor in the Texas Bowl and finishing the year 7-6. A lesson for everyone follows here: get into relationships with people with really low expectations, and then exceed them and reap the fruits of your labor when they overcompensate you for being one game over mediocre. Sadly, the tortured history of Illinois football is playing right into Zook’s hands here, since going 7-6 and beating Baylor gets the Illini their first bowl win in the 21st century, and really does make him the most successful Illinois football coach in two decades. I’m going to hug the first Illini fan I see today, and offer to buy them drinks, because this all makes me deeply sad.