Recent content by Fighter of the Nightman

Knock on wood and all, but there is definitely a different (better!!) vibe this year. All of the "official" stuff preseason last year was in the white or orange 1LL1NO1S uniforms (team photo, social media posts hyping up the season, player interviews, etc.). This year, we seem to be seeing...

Always a possibility I missed someone or made a mistake, but here are the ranked non-conference opponents for each Big Ten school now that the rankings are out! I'm only counting guaranteed opponents, not potential ranked matchups in tournaments and things like that. Just for fun and to round...

^ I wish in the meantime, they would just put some banners or something on either side! Obviously a super flimsy banner won't trap noise, but we could improve the look and noise-trapping abilities of that area SO easily, and we don't need to wait for a bunch of money! Chat GPT is obviously not...

The "official" listing of our top 25 games this year, as of today! Tuesday, Nov. 10 - #3 Illinois at #19 Texas Tech Tuesday, Nov. 17 - #3 Illinois at #2 Duke Friday, Dec. 4 - #4 UConn vs. #3 Illinois (Chicago, IL) Wednesday, Jan. 27 - #21 USC at #3 Illinois Tuesday, Feb. 2 - #22 UCLA at #3...

This won't be another complaint post (well, not REALLY, anyway ;) ) ... but I thought this was interesting from Chat GPT. I have not verified this information or anything (not sure how I would), so take it worth a grain of salt, but I asked Chat GPT what Big Ten football stadiums had the...

Oh for sure haha, the Duke game just had more parallels. As someone who will also be there, whose parents might he visiting for my birthday, who very well might be getting his last Illini basketball season living in Chicago (likely have to move in April after 7+ years here) and who saw us lose...

Guess we’ll just have to have our “Wake Forest moment” via pounding #1 Duke on the road. 😎

Also, random trivia ... but if our trip to Durham constitutes a top 5 matchup as we expect (hope), we should all appreciate how incredibly rare and awesome that is ... as far as I can tell, we have only played in 12 top 5 regular season matchups EVER and only 6 in the last 40 years. Good news...

It's interesting to compare the cadence of games these teams have to start out. For simplicity's sake, I will just use FOX's preseason rankings since they were very recent. Week One Nov. 2 - Fairleigh Dickinson at #3 Illinois Nov. 2 - Army at #2 Duke Nov. 2 - Miami (FL) vs. #1 Florida (Tampa...

I'm fine with the decision to leave the "skeleton" there for the foreseeable future, but I reject that this means no improvements can be done. We could easily bring the first row down to field level to match the corners on either side of it and get rid of the ugly gap, for example. That would...

Looking at the seat map, I am assuming 108 would also be in there. If we assume the UNC sections would be "mirrored" behind the other bench, they would be 105, 104, 103 and 102. That would only take up the following section of the arena: I will let someone who was at the game vs. Tennessee...

Lol, GOD I wish I were a billionaire who could just waste his extra cash on making the Illini elite. :ROFLMAO: "Alright, Josh ... I have $150 million here that I want to go toward my beloved Illini. And you can have $5 million of it today for NIL." "... and if you use this $45 million to...

Now that we have a few more preseason rankings, here are a few comparisons of Big Ten teams! Just like the AP Top 25, my composite below will give each team points based on its rank in each poll* (e.g., #1 = 25 points, #2 = 24 points ... #25 = 1 point). FOX #3 Illinois #4 Michigan State #15...

Exactly, haha. Going back to 1980 using this site, we've had the following helmets ... capping it at pre-Bielema to make the point that we CHOSE to stick with the Block I in the 2023 uniform reset. 1980 - 1988 | Arched ILLINI ... 4 bowl appearances (including a Rose Bowl), 5 straight winning...

Really, both of those will mean a lot to me this year. However, the NU game seems more important than usual given (A) we had finally established ourselves as clearly above them again after years of sucking and (B) it would be a hilariously awesome memory to beat them in our first trip to their...