... The State Illinois has a bit of an inferiority complex. This feeling even shows up sometimes in these pages. Not that Illinois does not have a pride and great history of its own because it does. But Texas is just supremely confident about things and Illinois sometimes struggles to feel good about itself...
As someone who was born in Peoria but moved to Iowa City when I was 8 (and did not move back to Illinois until I moved to Chicago in 2019), yet grew up with proud of being from Illinois in a sea of people INCREDIBLY proud to be from Iowa ... I cannot tell you how disappointing it was to start meeting people who grew up in Illinois as I got older and see exactly what you just described. I effectively grew up with the outlook of an Iowan but had the outlook shifted toward pride in Illinois.
So, I'm not saying there aren't good reasons for Illinoisans' attitudes, but it took the wind out of my sails, to be sure.
I get why people would complain about or be frustrated with Illinois, but people do that everywhere (to at least some extent) and yet so many other areas of the country have an inherent pride being from somewhere because if you don't, it's kind of a "pathetic" look ... like you're not proud of yourself. It's hard to explain, but I feel like a lot of Illinoisans assume everyone else knows all of the intricacies of our state government or something like that, so they like downplay Illinois to other people as if being proud of it would be an embarrassing look and this helps them save face ... but all they do is perpetuate us as a laughing stock to other people, as most outsiders' attitudes are "Wow, not even people FROM Illinois have pride in Illinois, that's weird and sad!" And then it's a vicious circle. I cannot stand when all of the other offices of my company across the country kind of "pump up" their locations during inter-office get togethers, and my boss craps all over Illinois. It's literally embarrassing, haha.
And make no mistake! More people growing up being proud to be from the State of Illinois has a very direct and very positive effect on Illini athletics.