Blast From The Past: Locksley and Zook Return To Face Illinois

In 2001 when Ralph Friedgen asked his then running backs coach Michael Locksley what his career aspirations were, the answer caught him off guard. 

Locksley told him that he wanted to one day be the head coach of the Maryland Terrapins football team to which Friedgen thought might have been a joke at his expense.

The Washington, D.C. native was not joking, though. 

“This has been my dream job since I was a little kid,” Locksley said. “I grew up going to Maryland football games and always wanted to be here. It’s home.”

Locksley spent the majority of his first stint at Maryland as the running backs coach. He was also the recruiting coordinator and worked tirelessly to get the local talent to stay home and play for the Terps.

Then in 2003, Locksley received a call from the head coach at the University of Florida, Ron Zook. He offered Locksley the same job he had at Maryland: running backs coach and recruiting coordinator. 

Coaching in the SEC at such a storied program like Florida was too much for Locksley to turn down. So, he uprooted and moved to Gainesville.

Locksley would only be there for two years, though. When Zook became the head coach at Illinois, he brought the Maryland native with him for an upgraded role, his first shot at being an offensive coordinator.

The pair turned the Fighting Illini around quickly. In just their third season in Champaign, they finished with a 9-4 record and earned a bid to the 94th Rose Bowl.

Locksley’s recruiting success in the DMV area was a major factor in Illinois's success. He convinced high-level talent like Vontae Davis and Arrelious Benn, who would go on to be all-time Illini greats, to leave the area and go to Illinois. 

Thanks to Illinois's success, Locksley got his first-ever head coaching job at the University of New Mexico. 

As can be the case with college football, a winding, twisting road led Locksley back to College Park for a brief stint as offensive coordinator from 2012-15. Then he was tabbed as the offensive coordinator at the University of Alabama in 2017-18. 

The Crimson Tide shattered records under Locksley with his offense leading them to a national championship while producing 18 future NFL players on the offensive side of the ball alone.

As fate would have it, following the 2018 season, the Terps were looking for a new man to lead them into the future.

When Locksley took the job, it became a homecoming that excited many fans, players, and alumni. But, nobody was more excited than Locksley himself. 

“This is where I’ve always wanted to be,” Locksley said at the time of his hire. “It’s a dream come true to be the head coach at the University of Maryland. It took hard work to get here but the real hard work starts now.”

In the three years since he took the helm, Locksley has made incremental progress toward restoring the Terps to glory. 

Signature wins over Penn State, Minnesota, and West Virginia, as well as recruiting local phenoms like Rakim Jarrett and Demeioun Robinson, have gone a long way toward proving Locksley is the right man for the job. 

When Locksley first got the job, not only did he need some experienced help, but he needed someone he trusted. So Locksley made a call to a guy who made that same call to him 15 years prior: Ron Zook.

The pair have a bond and a trust in one another that goes deeper than football. It is a relationship that has taken years to forge and is now unbreakable.

The only problem was there was not a spot open on Locksley's full-time coaching staff. So, Locksley brought Zook in as a senior analyst, where he spent two seasons.

Before the 2021 season, Locksley had an opening on his full-time staff and wasted no time promoting Zook, who is now the Terps' associate head coach, special teams coordinator, and outside linebackers coach.

For Zook, it is an opportunity he relishes and one he thanks Locksley for.

“I love the guy,” Zook said about Locksley. “He’s got a great football mind and he’s a hell of a coach, but he’s an even better guy. He’s everything you’d want in a head coach and to be a part of his staff is fantastic.”

With the pair now set to return to Champaign where they both accomplished great things, they are shifting the focus from their history to Maryland's present. 

With this being both the first conference game of the season and the first road contest for his team, Locksley wants to see his team take a big step forward when they take the field on Friday night. 

“As we always say, we are playing up to the standard, not the opponent,” Locksley said. “Illinois is a good football team and it’s going to be a test. It’s a Friday night, under the lights. We’re going to have to be prepared.”

Even though the game is somewhat of a homecoming for both, neither Locksley nor Zook are allowing emotions to dictate their approach. Both programs are vastly different from where they were in the mid-2000s. 

“These are the 2021 Terps and the 2021 Illini,” Locksley said. “We did a lot of great things back then but it’s a different time now. We’re different, they’re different and there’s really no competitive advantage that we have or they have.”

Locksley and Zook are going to be on the opposite sideline of where they once coached. But that will not matter once the game starts.

“I’m sure there will be some memories coming back,” Locksley said. “I won’t worry about that though. We’ve done a good job of not worrying about outside distractions and Illinois won’t be any different.”