Illini Football 2026

#79      
Navy_illini
lstewart53x3 said:
For sure. Over the past few years, Purdue has been a very bad program. The loss to them on Saturday was embarrassing and it hurts.

But program hierarchy is not static or set in stone. It’s in constant flux. Over the past 30 years, our record against Purdue is 8-19.

So if we want to guarantee we’re consistently a step ahead of Purdue, we need more NIL than Purdue.

For example, if we’re at $25 million and Ohio St is at $50 million, they’ll win that game 95% of the time. With the current scheduling, that means we’ll beat Ohio St once every 50 years.

If we have $25 million and Purdue has $20 million, that’s a game we’ll win what, 67% of the time? We’ll be favored. We should win. But on average, with those odds, we’d lose once every 3 years.

So if we want to increase our win percentage, we need to increase the gap in NIL between us and our peers. We’ll still get upset, there’s upsets across college football every week, we’ll just get upset less and have a chance to upset the programs above us more.
Click to expand...
Not sure how accurate this is but checks with ur numbers. I will caution you have to be able to evaluate talent and find players to fit your system. The teams who do that will be successful in this era. I feel if this team is missing a couple pieces on offense to be dominant and several on defense

 
#80      
bluemountain
Navy_illini said:
Not sure how accurate this is but checks with ur numbers. I will caution you have to be able to evaluate talent and find players to fit your system. The teams who do that will be successful in this era. I feel if this team is missing a couple pieces on offense to be dominant and several on defense

Click to expand...
Numbers seem reasonable, although I'm surprised Iowa and Wisconsin are this low. Can a Moneyball approach work in CFB? We've seen TB and Milwaukee consistently compete in MLB with much lower spend than the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees, but not sure whether it works as well in football
 
#81      
Curbelo Fanboy
bluemountain said:
Numbers seem reasonable, although I'm surprised Iowa and Wisconsin are this low. Can a Moneyball approach work in CFB? We've seen TB and Milwaukee consistently compete in MLB with much lower spend than the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees, but not sure whether it works as well in football
Click to expand...
Depends on how you define "work". Really good coaching can put people in spots to maximize what talent they have. Bret has done this in the past. However as we see there is a limit to that. Good coaching will put you in position to win the "winnable" games & maybe the occasional upset type of game but it's gonna come up short against the big boys. You can build a solid 8 or 9 win type of program but football has such a physical element to it that at the top level it comes down to the Jimmy's & Joe's. As we proved in 24 & 25 we could beat most of the league but couldn't measure up against the truly elite of OSU & Oregon.
 
#82      
ChiefGritty
bluemountain said:
Can a Moneyball approach work in CFB? We've seen TB and Milwaukee consistently compete in MLB with much lower spend than the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees, but not sure whether it works as well in football
Click to expand...
The thing about Moneyball is that it's fundamentally about utilizing the player movement restrictions in the various sport's collective bargaining agreement to build around talent that you have locked in at a below market price.

In college sports, at least as currently set up and governed, there are no player movement restrictions. Jackson Chourio transfers to Bama for market price two years ago (or he blows up your budget to stay).

People think of MLB as this incredibly stratified free market, but that's not true at all relative to where college sports is today.
 
Last edited:
#85      
therealmiket86
Illini2010-11 said:
Seems like some are going to get their wish on seeing the young QBs start. Appears that Houser out indefinitely with broken hand.

Going to be a very interesting and bumpy ride the second half of the season.
Click to expand...

It lets us see what we have with Clayton and Boyd. Hopefully some other freshman get a chance to play some now
 
#86      
AssemblyHallForever
Illini2010-11 said:
Seems like some are going to get their wish on seeing the young QBs start. Appears that Houser out indefinitely with broken hand.

Going to be a very interesting and bumpy ride the second half of the season.
Click to expand...
I am one to see what we have with Clayton. With our schedule, it’s very unlikely we get to 6 wins but you never know. Could Oregon and Maryland or UCLA be those three wins? As we have seen, anything is possible in this conference. We still have not seen what this offense can do with Platt. The one issue with Houser is he could not find touch on the deep ball. Does Clayton have that touch? If he does, this offense could be better especially with two weeks to prepare for Oregon. Hopefully Barnett can see some carries over the next several games.
 
#87      
Dkayak
Illini2010-11 said:
Seems like some are going to get their wish on seeing the young QBs start. Appears that Houser out indefinitely with broken hand.

Going to be a very interesting and bumpy ride the second half of the season.
Click to expand...
But a good opportunity to invest for next season and not a bad way to use the rest of this one (mostly a lost cause due to lack of defense). We’ll probably win some more and might not go bowling, but will be stronger next year for the investment in Clayton. And others like Barnett. Have some fun and play fearlessly with nothing to lose in six scrimmage-like games. Sell playing time during prep recruiting too.
 
Last edited:
#88      
BWBW
Dkayak said:
But a good opportunity to invest for next season and not a bad way to use the rest of this one (mostly a lost cause due to lack of defense). We’ll probably win some more and might not go bowling, but will be stronger next year for the investment in Clayton. And others like Barnett. Have some fun and play fearlessly with nothing to lose in six scrimmage-like games. Sell playing time during prep recruiting too.
Click to expand...
And do a better job "portalling" the defense.
 
#89      
ChiefGritty
yard-sign-in-dallas-letting-everyone-know-they-think-a-v0-vrka014a29o81.jpg
 
#91      
Nohops 73
Dkayak said:
But a good opportunity to invest for next season and not a bad way to use the rest of this one (mostly a lost cause due to lack of defense). We’ll probably win some more and might not go bowling, but will be stronger next year for the investment in Clayton. And others like Barnett. Have some fun and play fearlessly with nothing to lose in six scrimmage-like games. Sell playing time during prep recruiting too.
Click to expand...
I’m in favor of giving this talented freshman class ample playing time, both for retention and as a recruiting pitch.
Don’t want to lose any of these players due to lack of opportunity.
 
Back