Alan Look (aka - Chimper) is the Best Look in Sports Action Photography. Stock photos include Nature, Autos, Industry, Travel and more.
Sports coverage includes Illini, Ridgeview Mustangs, Tri-Valley Vikings, El Paso - Gridley Titans, Lexington Minutemen, Normal Community Ironmen, Normal West Wildcats, University High Pioneers, Prairie Central Hawks, Heyworth Hornets, and other varsity sports in McLean County and the 309 Area Code. https://alanlookphotograhy.zenfoliosite.com
On September 15th, 2012 Jimmy Garoppolo visited Hancock Stadium at Illinois State University as the starting quarterback for the Eastern Illinois Panthers. Who knew that 8 years later he would become one of 2 starting quarterbacks in the NFL's SuperBowl. Jimmy of course is the 2nd starting Quarterback from Eastern to do well. Ten Years before, another named Tony Romo completed his senior year at Eastern. Tony went on to an NFL career with the Dallas Cowboys.
Freelance photographer Alan Look was fortunate to have captured both players in action. The image of Tony Romo was taken at Eastern during the Homecoming game in 2002 against the Eastern Kentucky Colonels. The image has been used by national media and in several books. The images of Jimmy Garoppolo were both used by Upper Deck as trading cards for his rookie season.
Basketball season is starting to wrap up and March Madness is getting underway, so it's a bit hard to begin to think about football. Let's think about it anyway. The NFL Draft this year begins on May 8 and ends on the 10th. That's under 2 months away. It's also good to start talking about it before we all get headed outside to do all those chores and activities we haven't done since October.
Looking through our archives and the web listings of Draft Prospects, we came up with about 20 that played in Normal at Hancock Stadium. Of course, with transfers and such we may have missed a couple. In our archive of that near 20, we found images of 11.
Rankings can be found on the web, but the number 5 sticks in our head as the highest listed for a position that played here. Include in listings are: Jimmy Garoppolo, Erik Lora, Colton Underwood, Ray Agnew, Josh Aladenoye, Greg Hardin, Kurt Hess, Winston Wright, Cole Jirik, Doug Peete, Billy Turner, Tyler Starr, Marcus Williams, Brock Jensen, Kyle Bryant, Chris Elking, Shakir Bell, Taylor Gabriel, and Mycal Swaim.
It is almost time for the 2012 NFL Draft. The first round will be picked on April 26th, 2nd and third on the 27th, and the remaining rounds on Saturday the 28th.
Click to see Alan Look's photographs of 2012 NFL Draft Prospects that cover eligible players who have played in Bloomington - Normal.
Tim Jankovich, Illinois State Redbird Basketball coach is once again in the news as a possible prospect for a coaching job at another institution of higher learning. Several weeks ago it was reported that he was being considered at Tulsa and Kansas State. News reports this week have him under consideration by Southern Methodist in Texas.
Well, I got to wondering today just how many players I had shot that were possibly going to be in the 2012 NFL draft. A quick search of some of the polls and listings and a quick search of my archive came up with a number of players. One, Cody White I have been photographing since he attended High School at Normal Community West. There were a Number of Illinois State Redbirds that made the list and a good parcel from the Missouri Valley Conference. Fill in the rest of the non-conference games at Hancock and I got the following into a gallery. I only selected one image of each person for this gallery. If you search my archive by name, you will find several more of each. Unfortunately there were several players I did not capture.
Enjoy, and good luck to all involved when the draft takes place.
Once in a while I have a reason to dig through some old images. I always seem to find a couple of treasures.
I shot the Eastern Illinois Homecoming football game in 2002. Tony Romo was still pretty much an unknown. He was in his senior year at Eastern. They were playing the Eastern Kentucky Colonels, a rival from the same Ohio Valley Conference. Not only was it homecoming, but the two teams were tied for 1st place and this game was well into the season being played on October 12.
I was shooting for a small wire out from the east coast. I'm not sure I ever knew and I certainly don't remember if the images were being used by the media or a school, but there I was.
Well, 8 years later, Tony is very well known and in the NFL. One of the images in the gallery below has licensed several times - from books to ESPN, it seems to get some pretty good play. When an image becomes popular, it also starts to get used by people who don't want to pay. So photographers start doing things to find out where all it has surfaced. Yep, I found the image in a cropped state that had been used by a news organization on at least 4 blog sites.
Anyway, that got me looking for the rest of the take from that fun game. The Panthers won by one point at the very end of the game. The best of my takes (was one of the first I shot with a digital camera) are below.
