Illini fans have a really bad habit of treating ourselves as uniquely unlucky and never looking at the bright side (this was SIGNIFICANTLY less of a problem when I was a kid pre-Groce years). We should be thinking how lucky we were that TSJ got to play again this season all things considered BEFORE such a rule existed.
For all of the unlucky things that have happened to this program, there are plenty of "lucky" things, as well. Underwood leaving a program like Oklahoma State for us while we were in the depths of the cellar, Ayo committing while we were still nothing as far as prestige, extra COVID years literally giving us a Big Ten championship in 2022, actually just in general the SUPER precarious way we beat Iowa to win that championship in 2022, Domask absolutely blowing up for us this year, etc.