Semi-OT, but the frustrating thing is that the "bones" of a very large, engaged and NIL-donating Illini FOOTBALL fan base are there. Massive alumni base with plenty of money, no direct instate competition for fans, etc. However, our football fan base is largely divided into three groups, from my experience - the absolute diehards who make up the 35k in Memorial Stadium even when we're bad, the more casual fans who swell our crowds up to about 55k when there is hope and the truly fair weather fans whose "favorite team is the Illini" but are not willing to buy in if we are just going to disappoint them.
Unfortunately, the latter two groups are what we N-E-E-D to survive in college football's new landscape, and they are both (perhaps rightfully) intent on the program "showing them wins" before they buy in ... so we are caught in a terrible chicken-and-the-egg scenario. JMO, but we probably have one of the largest number/population discrepancies between our "engaged" fan base and our "latent" fan base in the entire country. MAN, what I would give to have more Illini fans who had the mindset of Texas A&M fans, where it bothered them so much that we weren't yet elite that we would do damn near anything possible to will it to happen, lol.
