Pregame: Illinois vs Wyoming, Saturday, August 27th, 3:00pm CT, BTN

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#51      

DeonThomas

DeonThomas
South Carolina
DeonThomas
Fighter of the Nightman said:
Any guesses on how many tickets we can sell for Saturday? I'm the eternal sucker I mean optimist, so I am hoping for over 40,000. :cool: Here is what we have pulled for the last several years:

2021: 41,064 vs. Nebraska (Saturday at 12:00 pm)
2019: 30,654 vs. Akron (Saturday at 11:00 am)
2018: 31,898 vs. Kent State (Saturday at 11:00 am)
2017: 42,505 vs. Ball State (Saturday at 11:00 am)
2016: 48,644 vs. Murray State (Saturday at 2:30 pm)
2015: 36,693 vs. Kent State (Saturday at 2:00 pm)

I know Nebraska brought a good chunk of fans and they are a Big Ten opponent and all ... but as sad as this is, we actually saw a huge bump for Bret's first game! Also interesting the huge spike in attendance when we switched from Beckman to Lovie.

I'll be a sucker/optimist again and predict that enough fans will like the 3:00 pm start time, weather will be good and there will be some hangover excitement from last year's near-bowl season surprise to push our attendance just past 40,000.
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I'm with you. 41,798

* 5-7 and a near bowl game last year
* Upsets over Penn State and Minnesota
* Bielema year 2
* Favored to win by Vegas
* Anticipated gorgeous weather
* New Offensive coordinator and (probable) new QB
* Hot shot young Defensive coordinator
* Alumni flying-in from out of state may drop $2500 for the weekend, so I'm thinking those in the surrounding community will certainly shell out $10-15/ticket for 5 hours of tailgating and an Illini victory!


Sorta surprised we don't already have 15-20 pages in this thread.......(are we off in our prognostication?)
 
#52      

BRucks

BRucks
BRucks
Fighter of the Nightman said:
Any guesses on how many tickets we can sell for Saturday? I'm the eternal sucker I mean optimist, so I am hoping for over 40,000. :cool: Here is what we have pulled for the last several years:

2021: 41,064 vs. Nebraska (Saturday at 12:00 pm)
2019: 30,654 vs. Akron (Saturday at 11:00 am)
2018: 31,898 vs. Kent State (Saturday at 11:00 am)
2017: 42,505 vs. Ball State (Saturday at 11:00 am)
2016: 48,644 vs. Murray State (Saturday at 2:30 pm)
2015: 36,693 vs. Kent State (Saturday at 2:00 pm)

I know Nebraska brought a good chunk of fans and they are a Big Ten opponent and all ... but as sad as this is, we actually saw a huge bump for Bret's first game! Also interesting the huge spike in attendance when we switched from Beckman to Lovie.

I'll be a sucker/optimist again and predict that enough fans will like the 3:00 pm start time, weather will be good and there will be some hangover excitement from last year's near-bowl season surprise to push our attendance just past 40,000.
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Hegemier(sp) projects 35k tickets sold. Of course, some % of that number won't attend.
 
#54      

illini80

illini80
Forgottonia
illini80
Aside from the fans that frequent places like this, unfortunately there isn’t a lot of buzz. I hope you are right. 35k was my prediction, but mid afternoon on what looks to be a great day may bring out more. The place is more fun when it’s full so it would be great on all accounts if we can do some things to fill it up. Get creative! Free tickets to high schools students with players handing them out, half price family packs, anything to get people in the stadium.
 
#55      

illinoistradition

I
illinoistradition
illini80 said:
Aside from the fans that frequent places like this, unfortunately there isn’t a lot of buzz. I hope you are right. 35k was my prediction, but mid afternoon on what looks to be a great day may bring out more. The place is more fun when it’s full so it would be great on all accounts if we can do some things to fill it up. Get creative! Free tickets to high schools students with players handing them out, half price family packs, anything to get people in the stadium.
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The family pack deal is already dirt cheap. $49 for 4 tickets to this game? What else can you do for 3 hours that costs $50 for a family of 4? The family pack for season tickets is also a tremendous deal. I will say that they don't advertise nearly enough as they should.
 
#56      

Fighter of the Nightman

Fighter of the Nightman
Chicago, IL
Fighter of the Nightman
illinoistradition said:
The family pack deal is already dirt cheap. $49 for 4 tickets to this game? What else can you do for 3 hours that costs $50 for a family of 4? The family pack for season tickets is also a tremendous deal. I will say that they don't advertise nearly enough as they should.
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Yeah, it’s the PR. I follow all of our social media accounts … they should be DESPERATELY promoting the importance of a full Memorial Stadium, not showing a quote from Bret on the subject once in a blue moon.
 
#57      

DeonThomas

DeonThomas
South Carolina
DeonThomas
illinoistradition said:
The family pack deal is already dirt cheap. $49 for 4 tickets to this game? What else can you do for 3 hours that costs $50 for a family of 4? The family pack for season tickets is also a tremendous deal. I will say that they don't advertise nearly enough as they should.
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Loren Tate and Steve Kelly had a couple of guys from the Mike White era (both stayed with the football program/school until just recently). They talked about literally driving tickets (via car) out to grocery stores in all of the surrounding towns/communities in order to get rid of the last few remaining tickets to ensure sell-outs.

I think you're right. We probably don't market, advertise or get creative enough. With all the TV revenue being generated, it's really more about having (orange clad) butts in seats than it is "ticket sales".
 
#58      

doowink

D
doowink
DeonThomas said:
Thanks Bill. Watching that clip again so emphatically drives home how badly we missed on that hire. (The guy was certainly trying, but he was just in waaaayyyyyy over his head.)

It also prompted me to do a google search to see if TB has landed anywhere since his 1-day volunteering stint with UNC. I found nothing.
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Makes you wonder what the other candidates that weren't hired for the job were actually like,... yikes!
 
#60      

Ransom Stoddard

Ransom Stoddard
Ordained Dudeist Priest
Bloomington, IL
Ransom Stoddard
Ander1345 said:
Gonna guess we were all in on Sumlin and then had no plan. Was there a reason we wouldn't take a chance on a BCS winning coach in Malzahn?
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I think it's more like coaches weren't going to take a chance on Illinois, given the state of the program and the (at least in hindsight) incompetence of Mike Thomas.
 
#61      

TheDrinkinLincoln

TheDrinkinLincoln
TheDrinkinLincoln
doowink said:
Makes you wonder what the other candidates that weren't hired for the job were actually like,... yikes!
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We had no back up to Sumlin who was literally just using us to drive up his price. He scrambled to hire the guy he hired at Cincy but !!!!! saw that would be a mistake and said no way. Every other coach of note knew they could do better so we had to go shopping in lower division and dun goofed which makes so much sense after seeing Thomas's body of work.
 
#62      

ChiefGritty

ChiefGritty
Chicago, IL
ChiefGritty
Ander1345 said:
Gonna guess we were all in on Sumlin and then had no plan. Was there a reason we wouldn't take a chance on a BCS winning coach in Malzahn?
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You're getting your Auburn coaches mixed up. You're thinking of Gene Chizik. We also went after Larry Fedora and Butch Jones.

Both Paul Chryst and Pat Narduzzi interviewed for the job as well. Thomas and Narduzzi had worked together at Cincy and Narduzzi wanted the job (this was a couple years before he got the Pitt job, remember) but Thomas felt he had to get someone with head coaching experience.

And Beckman, as a matter of fact, had a very good resume. On paper that's a good hire.

But I will never understand how Mike Thomas sat in a room with him for a long stretch of time and decided to stake his reputation on that guy. He wasn't as awkward in person, but still, even the Cvijanovic investigation revealed that he was not some monstrous abuser but just a general-purpose idiot.

Whitman and Lovie's day-long jam session in Tampa was a horribly conceived plan between two guys who fundamentally didn't understand what they were talking about when it came to building a major college football program. But knowing both guys I get how they came to feel otherwise, I feel like I have a sense of how that conversation went and why they decided to go forward with it.

I just can't even imagine the room with Thomas and Beckman.

The idea that this was just done thoughtlessly after getting rejected by Sumlin makes for a tidy narrative, and it's easier on the brain than the truth of a multi-hour interview of Tim Beckman that resulted in a multimillion dollar job offer ahead of other qualified candidates. We live in a crazy world sometimes.
 
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#63      

RockfordIllini

R
RockfordIllini
As it turns out, the real superstar at Toledo was Campbell. Not saying we should have hired him instead of Beckman, but I would think that after sitting down with the man, you would do a little more due diligence to confirm he was in fact responsible for the Toledo turnaround.

Agree on paper it was a reasonable hire but woof was he a joke in reality. I don’t know where the program is headed and I do wish recruiting was going a bit better, but I do feel like our floor is much higher. Feel like we should be competitive in most games and have a reasonable shot at bowling every year. Which honestly feels like a revalation.
 
#64      

ChiefGritty

ChiefGritty
Chicago, IL
ChiefGritty
RockfordIllini said:
As it turns out, the real superstar at Toledo was Campbell. Not saying we should have hired him instead of Beckman, but I would think that after sitting down with the man, you would do a little more due diligence to confirm he was in fact responsible for the Toledo turnaround.
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That's a little too tidy of a narrative really.

For one thing Campbell was just the OL coach in Beckman's first year in which he took over the wreckage of a point shaving scandal and had them playing decent football again.

For another, it was Beckman who gave the keys of the offense to the then 30 year old Campbell. It also never ceases to blow my mind that the current OC and DC of Tennessee are Alex Golesh and Tim Banks. Beatty and Gonzales haven't lacked for high-profile work since either.

An eye for young coaching talent is one of the best things a head coach can have, and Beckman had it, there and here.

But there's nothing promising young assistants can do if their CEO has his pants around his ankles all the time. Alas.
 
#65      

Ander1345

A
Ander1345
Yeah Campbell did not have the resume to be a B1G HC at the time of the hiring of Beckman.
 
#66      

Ander1345

A
Ander1345
ChiefGritty said:
You're getting your Auburn coaches mixed up. You're thinking of Gene Chizik. We also went after Larry Fedora and Butch Jones.

Both Paul Chryst and Pat Narduzzi interviewed for the job as well. Thomas and Narduzzi had worked together at Cincy and Narduzzi wanted the job (this was a couple years before he got the Pitt job, remember) but Thomas felt he had to get someone with head coaching experience.

And Beckman, as a matter of fact, had a very good resume. On paper that's a good hire.

But I will never understand how Mike Thomas sat in a room with him for a long stretch of time and decided to stake his reputation on that guy. He wasn't as awkward in person, but still, even the Cvijanovic investigation revealed that he was not some monstrous abuser but just a general-purpose idiot.

Whitman and Lovie's day-long jam session in Tampa was a horribly conceived plan between two guys who fundamentally didn't understand what they were talking about when it came to building a major college football program. But knowing both guys I get how they came to feel otherwise, I feel like I have a sense of how that conversation went and why they decided to go forward with it.

I just can't even imagine the room with Thomas and Beckman.

The idea that this was just done thoughtlessly after getting rejected by Sumlin makes for a tidy narrative, and it's easier on the brain than the truth of a multi-hour interview of Tim Beckman that resulted in a multimillion dollar job offer ahead of other qualified candidates. We live in a crazy world sometimes.
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To be honest I can get behind Thomas's thinking regarding previous HC experience. I didn't pay attention to the team as much under Turner but from what I recall we went from decent HC but awful recruiter/team manager(Turner) to great recruiter but not much else(Zook).

It really was just that Beckman was not and should have never been the guy. But I can kinda see the line of thinking that Thomas was hoping would pan out.
 
#67      

ChiefGritty

ChiefGritty
Chicago, IL
ChiefGritty
Ander1345 said:
To be honest I can get behind Thomas's thinking regarding previous HC experience. I didn't pay attention to the team as much under Turner but from what I recall we went from decent HC but awful recruiter/team manager(Turner) to great recruiter but not much else(Zook).

It really was just that Beckman was not and should have never been the guy. But I can kinda see the line of thinking that Thomas was hoping would pan out.
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It's only the fact that Narduzzi, frankly, has a half-order of Beckman's doofusness in him that allows my brain to comprehend that Narduzzi (whose work Thomas had first hand knowledge of and appreciated!) was beating down our door and Thomas chose Beckman anyway.

You just hire the best guy.

It's possible we're sitting here saying something similar about Bielema versus Marcus Freeman in 10 years, but in fairness there was a much sharper risk and experience gap there compared to the HC of Toledo vs the DC of Michigan State.
 
#69      

Ander1345

A
Ander1345
ChiefGritty said:
It's only the fact that Narduzzi, frankly, has a half-order of Beckman's doofusness in him that allows my brain to comprehend that Narduzzi (whose work Thomas had first hand knowledge of and appreciated!) was beating down our door and Thomas chose Beckman anyway.

You just hire the best guy.

It's possible we're sitting here saying something similar about Bielema versus Marcus Freeman in 10 years, but in fairness there was a much sharper risk and experience gap there compared to the HC of Toledo vs the DC of Michigan State.
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Bielema's floor at Arkansas is better than our floor had been for literally decades of coaches.

I fully believe Bielema will turn out to be the best hire we have made in decades.

Nothing indicates to me that Marcus Freeman will have ND running the same. It wasn't like they were on top of the world prior to Kelly. It's a relative unknown.
 
#70      

Mr. Tibbs

Mr. Tibbs
southeast DuPage
Mr. Tibbs
Freeman may very well be the next Knute Rockne
or
Freeman may very well be the next Gerry Faust or Terry Brennan

ND hired him because they were painted into a corner, and had no other viable option considering they would have to fire him to do it

its anyones guess how it turns out . But the guy can recruit right now with the best of them
 
#73      

alamocityillini

alamocityillini
San Antonio
alamocityillini
IllinoisssssssVarsity said:
How do I find this? Do I have to teach in Illinois?
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Extra Yard for Teachers – As part of the College Football Playoff Foundation's national platform to promote and reward educators, Illinois football will pay tribute to their favorite and most impactful teachers and local and regional educators will be honored during in-game activities. Teachers will also be offered free tickets to the game. Contact lkmense@illinois.edu or call (217) 300-8491 to learn more.
 
#74      

JTOWNillini

J
JTOWNillini
DeonThomas said:
Thanks Bill. Watching that clip again so emphatically drives home how badly we missed on that hire. (The guy was certainly trying, but he was just in waaaayyyyyy over his head.)

It also prompted me to do a google search to see if TB has landed anywhere since his 1-day volunteering stint with UNC. I found nothing.
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Hiring a MAC coach who just went 7-1 in back-to-back seasons by an AD who just made 2 successful hires of very good MAC coaches in the previous 5 years was a really sound plan.

It’s just we had no idea the stud was the 31-year-old coordinator. Just our luck.
 
#75      

Fighter of the Nightman

Fighter of the Nightman
Chicago, IL
Fighter of the Nightman
JTOWNillini said:
Hiring a MAC coach who just went 7-1 in back-to-back seasons by an AD who just made 2 successful hires of very good MAC coaches in the previous 5 years was a really sound plan.

It’s just we had no idea the stud was the 31-year-old coordinator. Just our luck.
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It wasn’t a bad hire on paper, but I think we’d all be lying if we said his demeanor wasn’t at the very least reason for pause, haha. Striking out on our first choices just reinforced doubts. With that said, I’ve been all in on every hire we’ve made to begin with, and I always will be until they give me reason not to! Easily the most excited about Bielema, though the lack of recruiting is concerning.
 
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