I would prefer that we were ranked. At some point down the road, I want an announcer to say, "the Illini have now been ranked in the top twenty five for ____ straight weeks, tops in the nation."I like “loss insurance.” Good way to put it. But while the rest in that sentence is true in general, do you really think the Illini being just out of the top 25 for a couple of weeks is going to hinder its recruiting? So we should brace for down recruiting this summer?
Sure in general it is better to be ranked early, but I really don’t think it matters that much. Someone above said “To 90% of college fans, they don’t pay any mind to programs that don’t show up in the top 25 feed.” For the most part, college fans watch who they have interest in. I just saw that Cinn is rated #17. I live in Ohio, and having that knowledge now is not going to make me want to watch them more. Why? Cuz I have no interest in them. I’d say that is typical of most fans. They follow/watch their team(s) and then teams from the same conference(s) as their team.
What creates meaningful exposure as far as fans and recruits are concerned is the NCAA tournament and last third or so of the season. If this year’s team ends up being as good as we hope, not being ranked for first two weeks of season isn’t going to make a bit of difference. And if we’re not as good as we hope, being ranked #24 or #23 this week isn’t going to matter either.
That would be nice for recruiting.