Illini Football 2025

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#53      
Fighter of the Nightman
aaeismacgychel said:
I was at that game. It was my freshman year of college.. Owned season tickets, drove down from Chicago with friends. I recall us getting excited the whole car ride there for the possibility of winning a B10 Championship and rushing the field. The students were great rocking Memorial Stadium all season. We showed up expecting a sell out crowd ready to blow the roof off.

Reality was uhhhhhh different. Stadium seemed maybe 60% full. The students never really showed up and the whole crowd that did show up was quiet, subdued, and honestly grumpy, almost like they were forced to be there. We were in the student section and told to sit down multiple times starting right at opening kickoff to allow the rows worth older people behind us (who I guess must've bought the tickets from whatever students had them). Even had the ushers called on us who basically apologized to us but said we needed to sit because nobody else wanted to stand.

There was little to no cheering or celebrating throughout and the Stadium was about as dead as anytime during our 2 or less win seasons. As the time ticked down the majority of people there quickly started filing out, so relatively few stayed to celebrate. And yeah, there was no rushing the field that day.

We left disappointed for sure, but were excited about the NYE bowl game and the thoughts of the opportunities we'd get to rush and tear down the goalposts in the coming years. As we know, unfortunately those opportunities never happened.

So yeah, this might just be the PTSD ridden traumatized Illini fan in me talking, but even if we were somehow were magically undefeated, I don't know if we'd sell that Thanksgiving game out. That said, I'd find somehow someway to be there and I promise I would be the same standing cheering exuberant fan I was when I was a freshman. The Aae fan redemption game.
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Yeah, I just feel like our Thanksgiving Weekend game is doomed for a few reasons.

1) The rivalry is frankly one of the least exciting in the conference, if not the nation. Illini fans in the Quad Cities might hate Iowa, ones in Rockford might hate Wisconsin, ones in Metro East might hate Mizzou most, etc. However, I know very few who'd ever list Northwestern first, even in the northern suburbs. NU was so bad historically, and they are a fundamentally different type of fan base dynamic than ours. "Instate rivalry" is supposed to involve divided households and coexisting with the rival fan bases. In Iowa, you aren't getting wildly different people winding up Cyclones vs. Hawkeyes ... same relative dynamic with Purdue/Indiana, Kansas/KSU, Arizona/ASU and even Michigan/MSU. That same dynamic just doesn't exist with us and Northwestern, as they are a tiny private school with students from all over and no material fan base beyond alumni. It is much more comparable to Tennessee/Vanderbilt than other instate "rivalries" ... and go see how many Tennessee fans get jacked up for the Vandy game vs. other SEC opponents, lol.

2) On that note, we just don't have many Illini fans who have built up Thanksgiving traditions around the Northwestern game in the same way that Nebraska fans KNOW they will have a can't-miss game on the Friday after Thanksgiving, whether it was Colorado, Iowa or anyone else. Could we string together countless 9+ win seasons in a row and start getting good crowds for this weekend? Sure, I guess ... but it will always be an uphill battle, as we don't have the rivalry OR tradition aspect going for us.

3) A disproportionate percent of Illinois' student body is far away from campus on this weekend compared to other comparable, non-Blue Blood schools. The Fall 2024 undergrad enrollment at Illinois was 37,140, with 26,649 (or 71.8%) being instate. However, of that 71.8%, only 4.3% is from Champaign County. If you tally together all of the Chicago MSA counties, that total is 57.4% of the student body ... and that doesn't count kids from equal or greater distances from campus, such as Rockford, the Quad Cities, Metro East, etc. So, it's safe to say that well over 60% of the student body would need to commit to a pretty long early trip back for a cold football game vs. Northwestern. Would some do it?? Sure! However, it's a lot easier for Michigan fans in Detroit to get back to Ann Arbor (not to mention for the nation's preeminent rivalry game...) or Nebraska fans to drive over from Omaha first thing in the morning.

I have beat this horse before, but it's a shame NU built a great new stadium ... because this game would have worked out better for both sides to turn into an annual event at a new Bears stadium. We can't manufacture rivalry hatred that just isn't there, but we could at least make it some sort of "Chicago-themed event," given that is where the majority of our students and alumni will be this time of year.
 
#54      
QueenCityIllini
Joel Goodson said:
I don't hate it:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1942425057579401259
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I do. We aren’t even close to being the next Indiana. We have built our success from the ground up. Indiana had a flash in the pan season due to having 15 starters transfer from JMU. Having 23 wins in 3 years and finishing a season ranked and starting a season ranked AP Top 25 if the furthest thing from Indiana. I hate this comparison and Joel Klatt actually annoys the piss out of me.
 
#56      
Fighter of the Nightman
QueenCityIllini said:
I do. We aren’t even close to being the next Indiana. We have built our success from the ground up. Indiana had a flash in the pan season due to having 15 starters transfer from JMU. Having 23 wins in 3 years and finishing a season ranked and starting a season ranked AP Top 25 if the furthest thing from Indiana. I hate this comparison and Joel Klatt actually annoys the piss out of me.
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This is exactly why I have the game at IU circled and think it is IMMENSELY important for our season and general program trajectory. If we lose yet another non-conference road game to a decent Duke team but go on a tear in the Big Ten season, no one will remember a loss in Durham. All else equal, dropping a game to a USC or Washington is also immaterial, at least IMO.

However, winning a road game at Indiana early in the season seems like a statement that we are here to stay more than they are, especially with it being on their home field in what will very likely be an extremely hyped environment. If we didn't have 7 frickin' weddings this year and 4 corresponding bachelor/bachelorette parties (after having none of any of that for TWO YEARS, lol!), I might actually have gotten to attend this one!
 
#57      
altgeld88
QueenCityIllini said:
I do. We aren’t even close to being the next Indiana. We have built our success from the ground up. Indiana had a flash in the pan season due to having 15 starters transfer from JMU. Having 23 wins in 3 years and finishing a season ranked and starting a season ranked AP Top 25 if the furthest thing from Indiana. I hate this comparison and Joel Klatt actually annoys the piss out of me.
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Thank you. I was about to post the same thing. I've been thinking for a while now that "Illinois is this year's Indiana" is an absolutely lazy journalistic trope.
 
#60      
Mr. Tibbs
we need to POUND the snot outta IU.

this is coming from a guy who paid over 100,000 to that school for my daughters degree from there .
In Fine Arts , of all things .

she’s doing well in life , but not doing anything remotely affiliated with painting/sculpture/print making . oh well . she’s hardly unique in that regard
 
#62      
the juiceman cometh
PleaseMakeABowlGame said:
Everyone nationally loves and is enamored with Dane Key at Nebraska. the guy we got from WVU had both more catches and yards last year.
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I tried the find the answer to why Clement doesn't get much love. In a reddit post some WVU fans say he benefitted from a weak receiver's room and while he is good, he does drop a lot of passes. I couldn't find dropped pass statistics, but Rotowire does list targets, so I figured I'd try and extrapolate based on that.

According to Rotowire, Clement caught 51 passes on 79 targets. This comes out to 64.6%. Key caught 47 passes on 99 targets, which comes out to just 47.5%. Now to be sure, Clement had a better QB situation at WVU than Key had at Kentucky. WVU QBs completion percentage on the season was 60.9%. Clement therefore appears to have caught more of his targets than the average WVU receiver. In contrast, Kentucky QBs completion percentage on the season was 53.7%. So while Kentucky QBs were horrendous, it appears Key did worse than the average receiver at catching his targets.

So yeah, I think Clement is being criminally underrated. 247 has him as the #120 WR Transfer. I have a very hard time believing there were 119 transfer WRs that were better than him.
 
#64      
WhereDoWeStandWithStorr?
Fly Illini Fly! said:
Gabe Jacas against the state of Michigan last season: 22 pressures, 5 sacks, 6 TFLs.
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Not sure if many noticed, but against msu he had 10 pressures (1.5 sacks), and if you look at the tape could've very easily had a 3 sack game (if not more). was visibly very frustrated a couple of times - a lot of them were him getting the initial push and then Coleman/Briggs finishing the play. Would imagine it was a blessing in disguise since it may have very well elevated him to a no doubt day 2 pick (with a 10 or 11 sack season).
 
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#67      
jamie13197
the juiceman cometh said:
I tried the find the answer to why Clement doesn't get much love. In a reddit post some WVU fans say he benefitted from a weak receiver's room and while he is good, he does drop a lot of passes. I couldn't find dropped pass statistics, but Rotowire does list targets, so I figured I'd try and extrapolate based on that.

According to Rotowire, Clement caught 51 passes on 79 targets. This comes out to 64.6%. Key caught 47 passes on 99 targets, which comes out to just 47.5%. Now to be sure, Clement had a better QB situation at WVU than Key had at Kentucky. WVU QBs completion percentage on the season was 60.9%. Clement therefore appears to have caught more of his targets than the average WVU receiver. In contrast, Kentucky QBs completion percentage on the season was 53.7%. So while Kentucky QBs were horrendous, it appears Key did worse than the average receiver at catching his targets.

So yeah, I think Clement is being criminally underrated. 247 has him as the #120 WR Transfer. I have a very hard time believing there were 119 transfer WRs that were better than him.
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Watch Hank Beatty this year. Our Wr. Room is really solid.
 
#75      
Krombopulos_Michael
Epsilon said:
Honestly it’s just a reflection of how little respect oddsmakers have given us. And Lincoln Riley / USC are continually overrated. They’ve got a monster class coming - let’s see what LR does with it…
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I think they were showing the best and the worst during that time frame. Essentially not a good thing that Lincoln Riley is on that graphic
 
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