What about this jersey and uniform as a throw back?
Illini Football 2026
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I feel like the occasional orange-out adequately honors that general thread of our uniform history.
I'm the biggest Bob Blackman defender here, but ultimately none of the teams in our orange-primary era accomplished enough to produce very much nostalgia.
Our most orange jersey-forward coaches ever were Blackman, Moeller and Beckman, right? I rest my case.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
The typing and organizing is nothing, but my brain completely short circuits when I try to guess who the networks might pick.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
The way SP+ works is, the computers generate each team an offensive rating and a defensive rating. It then subtracts the defensive rating from each team’s offensive rating to form a net rating and ranks teams from highest to lowest net rating.
Sure, we dropped one more spot in the rankings than Michigan, but that’s simply because the net ratings in our rankings cluster are closer together. Michigan’s net rating dropped from 17.0 to 12.2 after the WMU game. A net rating drop of 4.8. Our net rating dropped from 10.4 to 7.5, a net rating drop of 2.9.
So Michigan’s net rating actually fell by twice as much as ours. If Michigan would’ve had our original ranking, they would’ve fallen 21 spots, about as big of a drop as any team in the country.
Ohio St’s net rating fell by 2.7 in their win over Ball St but because of the size of the gap between them and the #2 team, they stayed #1.
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Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
All of these years later, I did not realize I am exactly one year older than Benn. Such a great player to wear the orange and blue during my time as a student.
Will never forget the one glove he tossed me on Senior Day 2010 (my friend caught the other).
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
I’m old enough to remember people on this board saying we needed to fire Henry with a 47th ranked defense because “it literally could not get any worse”.
Welp.
I probably did, or at least I thought it.
Then again, as I’ve gotten older, no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse, even when it doesn’t seem like it can.
That said, I’m excited for the future, the program is in good hands.
Last year, we were 100th in points per drive allowed.
Right now, we’re 131st out of 138 teams.
Can it get worse? Yes. But there’s only 6 spots remaining until it mathematically can’t.
Right now, we’re 131st out of 138 teams.
Can it get worse? Yes. But there’s only 6 spots remaining until it mathematically can’t.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
I’d probably use efficiency ratings like SP+ over raw points per possession, since it takes opponent strength into account. I can’t remember the exact stat, but we played something like 5 of the top 10 offenses in the country last year. Most teams would give up points to those opponents.
SP+ had us at 47 on defense overall last year. I’m terrified to check where we’ll be tomorrow. We dropped from the 40s to the 60s after our week 1 game. I imagine we’ll be the 80s or 90s after this one.
I knew we could be worse but I thought we could easily do better
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
The thing is, as mediocre as last season’s defense was, it was still better than 75-80% of our defenses over the past 30 years.
Making a change can make things better. But it can also make things worse.
Yeah but we should stop comparing to previous years and set the bar at minimum middle of the road power 4 defense
Is Hauck pulling a Lovie on us?? His salary was $265K / yr as the HC at Montana (equivalent of a position coaches salary here). He retires b/c he says has had enough of the NIL. A couple of days later, his phone rings from a desperate Brett B "hey Bobby, it takes a lot money to retire. You sure you got that covered? "Well Brett, now that you mention it, I am not really sure" "Well how'd you like make almost triple your old salary helping my out here in Chambana for $700K...hmmmm...hmmmm"? "Geee Brett, that's an awful lot of money. Do I have to be on the field actually coaching the guys during game"? "Heck no Bobby, you can just sit up in coaches box and phone it in". "Can I bring my boy and coupel of other guys" "sure, bring 'em all, we'll give them a raise too" "Well shoot Brett, that sounds pretty damn good and $700K will make my retirement a lot better...count me in".
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Why? The past is highly correlated with the present/future. For every Indiana, there’s a dozen Wake Forests who were bad in the past and are still bad now. So it’s generally more useful to compare your program to its own past than any other program’s present.
My point, anyhow, wasn’t to compare to the past, but simply to point out that: if you have a defense that’s better than 80% of your previous defenses and you choose to change that defense, it’s almost more likely your next defense will be worse than it is to be better.
I spent much of last year sticking up for Aaron Henry and his average defense because I feared this exact situation: trading average for bad.
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