It's a wild time to be an Illini fan. We're heading into spring practice and I'm thankful for the stability of our football program after an up-and-down basketball season.
I don't remember the last time I thought, "Oh well, I'm really excited for football!" after a loss in March Madness. This is possibly the first time ever. Even in other years where I was optimistic about football coming up, we either (A) didn't make the Tournament so I was checked out of hoops long ago or (B) my optimism for the next season was way higher than for football
2022: Sucked we lost to Houston, but I liked the RJ/CoHawk/Goode pieces, and football was going to be a mystery.
2021: Was gut punched we lost to Loyola and was excited for Bret, but we were such a mystery and basketball was still going to be way better as long as Kofi returned.
--- No NCAA Tournaments ---
2013: The close loss to Miami (FL) REALLY had me believing Groce had this thing humming ... I was so encouraged. Meanwhile, it was a typical "we'll see what happens" attitude toward football.
2011: Maybe this one was close? 2011 really sucked out my remaining enthusiasm for Weber, but I also wasn't super optimistic for football, either.
2009: This is probably the best candidate (I remember us all thinking 2009 could be a true bounce-back season for football), but I also fully bought back into Weber with our surprisingly good 2009 season and good recruiting classes coming in.
2007: I was still under the spell of 2005, and I didn't follow recruiting enough to think our (future Rose Bowl) football team would be anything special
2006 or Before: Not even close.
It's a weird feeling and I wish our hoops team had done better, but I CAN'T say I hate it, haha.