I agree that neither his corniness nor the sad state of our home court (dis)advantage is entirely his fault, but unless he is expecting approximately half of the fans in attendance to spontaneously self-assign the responsibility to pick up the slack for the second (and any subsequent) I L L, it's not much of a chant to just periodically throw out an I L L over the PA system.
My main objection to him and by extension, the entire audiory experience, is that it might as well just be an intern (or an AI) with a soundboard. It's generic dreck, coincidentally, not unlike most professional sporting events...
There's no vibe, no personality, and no energy in our crowds. We used to have all that in spades. Whoever is in charge of the noise, band, PA announcer, timeout gimmicks, etc. at the Assembly Hall is just as much to blame for this as the mediocre remodeling job.
The War Chant was the core song to get the crowd revved up. After they dumped that, there’s nothing else uniquely Illinois that can fire up the crowd.
