Our offensive line has to play flawless to be an average Big line. Same for the DL. We can compete everywhere else. If we miss assignments and can't execute in the least little bit, then it's a long frustrating day.
Pregame: Illinois vs Michigan State, Saturday, November 16th, 1:30pm CT, FS1
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We have a win probability of 66.9 percent and MSU is 33.1 percent per ESPN but the line is only -2.5. Very strange.
IMO he’s a bit moody and overly dramatic."Alex Faust (play-by-play) and Robert Smith (analyst) have the call on FS1."
Illinois Hosts Michigan State, Finishes Home Schedule - University of Illinois Athletics
Tickets are still available for the Fighting Illini's home finale against the Spartans at 1:30 p.m. CT at Memorial Stadium.fightingillini.com
altgeld88
- Arlington, Virginia
Updated Sellout Watch for Michigan State:
Ticket sales continue to move relatively slowly. The Horseshoe has about 275 tickets left. The West Balcony still has over 300 tickets left, which is higher than normal. The East Balcony sales are relatively higher than the rest of the stadium since there is a 4-pack ticket deal that is pushing sales in the EB and HS. I think final attendance ends up slightly over 50,000 with a lot of no shows.
Ticket sales continue to move relatively slowly. The Horseshoe has about 275 tickets left. The West Balcony still has over 300 tickets left, which is higher than normal. The East Balcony sales are relatively higher than the rest of the stadium since there is a 4-pack ticket deal that is pushing sales in the EB and HS. I think final attendance ends up slightly over 50,000 with a lot of no shows.
Illinois doesn't blow teams out. Our conservative nature as a football team keeps scoring down. If books want competitive money coming in on each team, Illinois at most could be a -6.5. Injuries, poor showing against Minny, and the narrative we fade at the end of the season pushes it down from there.
Really the only players that are out are Feagin and Rosiek. We get Miles Scott back in the 2nd half. Strain and Barna appear to be coming back. Daniel Brown will see some playing time. Along with some players that were on redshirt to begin the season are now eligible to play and will see increased playing time.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Thanks for the update! Hopefully with a crowd of over 50k that is disproportionately in the East Balcony, it will look close to full and still provide a good atmosphere. We used our gimme home loss vs. Minnesota ... we simply cannot afford a second straight home loss before finishing with two games away from home. HAVE to finish this year strong!
I get that we need to win, but it's incredible that people are so fickle going to games.
We lose a tight one to Minny in a 6-3 season and we can barely get 50K?
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Unfortunately, it's very helpful to think of (A) Illini football as Iowa basketball here and (B) Illini basketball as Iowa football. The (A) programs have had so many bad years that they beat down their fan support to a relatively low floor. Thus, even when they get good teams and their loyal/active fan bases are genuinely excited, a few factors still work against them to get good crowds on a routine basis:
1. Their season ticket bases are small, so they rely on single-game ticket sales to do way too much heavy lifting ... programs that get full crowds all the time rely on a higher proportion of the weekly attendance being season ticketholders who have already bought those tickets regardless of what happens each week (or if they actually even show up, as we all must remember that the only attendance figures available are tickets sold).
2. Their fans have been let down enough times that they have not decided to make attending Program A's sporting events a part of their life. That might sound melodramatic, but it's genuinely important! To get consistently good attendance, you need fans - even those who only attend one game per year - to treat attending games as an immovable tradition ... something that happens regardless of how good the team is that year simply because it's fun, it's an excuse to get together with friends/family and it's "just what you do" ... it's a habit to show up.
3. Indeed, when fans have been burned before, they will be much quicker to hop off the bandwagon to preemptively avoid the pain. Whereas Michigan fans will keep packing the house every week through a disappointing season because "they're Michigan" (and the defending national champions, lol...), Program A fans have a SEVERE lack of confidence and swagger. There is a subconscious desire among the more casual fans to not "go down with the ship," so to speak.
Compare that to Program B (Illini basketball and Iowa football). You have tens of thousands of people alive with fond memories of true success in the last 25 years ... conference championships, Final Fours/BCS Bowls, electric home atmospheres, etc. They have to be convinced NOT to show up rather than the far more difficult task of convincing fans TO show up.
When our 2023 basketball team played its first home game after knocking off #2 Texas, guess how many fans were in the stands to see us get shockingly punked by Penn State? A sold out crowd of 15,544. Fast forward a couple of weeks to our seeming self destruction of losing 3 of 5, Skyy leaving the team, rumors of team chemistry issues and coming off of a humiliatingly bad loss at Northwestern bringing us to 0-3 in the Big Ten ... guess how many were in the stands for our next game vs. Wisconsin? That's right a sold out crowd of 15,544. Why?? Not JUST because we were defending Big Ten champs and our fans still believed we could turn this thing around ... but also simply because it was a Saturday in January, and people in Illinois show up to Illini basketball games at such times as a part of their DNA!
The above example is a far cry from our 2022 football team drawing over 56k for MSU when we were 7-1, only to have attendance drop by over 11k for the next week's Purdue game because of a disappointing loss to the Spartans. The sad fact is we are just fighting an uphill battle to get big crowds. The good news, though, is that it is getting SO much better. In Bret's first year, our "floor" crowd was like 35k and GENUINE excitement could only get 46k or so in the stands for huge games vs. Iowa and Minnesota in 2022. Fast forward to this year and we have sold out two games, with our floor for conference games now being around 50k. As long as we continue to be a competitive program, it will keep improving!
Illini4Chief
- TENNESSEE
I had the same feeling before the Minny game.....You get the feeling we're just not there....glimpse of moving forward, but like you said...we do have a way of letting down.
Illinois 27-17.
Absolutely. The good news is that football attendance floor has been creeping upwards the past few years. Sustained success and optimism about the long-term future is a driving factor in that. I think people sometimes forget the long-term effects of continuous underperformance. Iowa basketball is a great example. It'd blow a lot of younger fans minds based on their current fanbase and half empty and asleep arena but Iowa was one of the rowdiest and scariest places to play and had a ravenous following in the 80s. It had 00s House of Paign energy and volume. What happened? A generation of losing and hostility to the fanbase, that they still haven't recovered from despite years of relative success this decade including an All-American. It is much easier to destroy your fanbase than it is to build it back up.
The amazing thing is, if Bret were to put together another 4-5 years of consistent >.500 football, there's going to be a younger generation of fans who don't understand losing on the level we do. You look on here and any loss even in a historic winning season means the sky is falling and we're never going to win again. People even hoping we lose so we won't embarrass ourselves and go back to 2 win seasons. The next generation will think a bad year is 5-7 or 6-6 and won't have that same level of PTSD and the attendance floor will similarly increase. Fans who are optimistic and expect to win go to games. Fans believing that Lucy is going to pull the football away and see us embarrass ourselves as the same old Illini find reasons not to, or even if they do, already think the game is lost the first time something bad happens.
Point is, as you said, it's going to take time to get there, but it looks like we're on the right path. Gotta stay patient and just keep winning and it'll sort itself out
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
^ Yep. This exercise is totally just for fun and there are MANY other factors to consider, but just consider Iowa's average attendance this year in comparison to the Iowa City MSA and our average attendance this year in comparison to the Champaign-Urbana MSA. Again, fans from outside of the MSA obviously attend both games and other factors such as size of the student body, population within an hour drive time, percentage of local population that are fans, etc. matter ... this is just to illustrate a point that we have room to grow, theoretically.
IOWA
69,250 average attendance
180k MSA population
--> .38 fraction of fans at the game
ILLINOIS
55,098 average attendance (a massive increase from previous years, as stated!)
236k MSA population
--> .23 fraction of fans at the game
If we had a fraction similar to Iowa's after years of winning, we'd be drawing 89,680 per game, lol. So, even if we got that up closer to .30 because we will just never have the instate loyalty of the Hawkeyes or whatever other excuse, our average attendance would be around 71,000 or so ... and given that it LITERALLY used to be the last time we were consistently competitive, selling out a 61,000 seat stadium in the near future if momentum continues is more than doable.
IOWA
69,250 average attendance
180k MSA population
--> .38 fraction of fans at the game
ILLINOIS
55,098 average attendance (a massive increase from previous years, as stated!)
236k MSA population
--> .23 fraction of fans at the game
If we had a fraction similar to Iowa's after years of winning, we'd be drawing 89,680 per game, lol. So, even if we got that up closer to .30 because we will just never have the instate loyalty of the Hawkeyes or whatever other excuse, our average attendance would be around 71,000 or so ... and given that it LITERALLY used to be the last time we were consistently competitive, selling out a 61,000 seat stadium in the near future if momentum continues is more than doable.
For the sake of my grandchildren, I hope you're right....
mhuml32
Gesture of Northern Aggression
One of these entities is designed to maximize profit and the other is not.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
In terms of actually putting butts in seats there is a fickleness involved, but we shouldn't forget that most of the variance between games from a ticket buying perspective is people before the season choosing a game or two they want to attend, with things like homecoming and dad's day being a factor.
And that picking a November game way in advance is a dice roll weather-wise
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
This is very true. Another key is that unless the team is competing for a championship, November games are always going to be a bit difficult to fill. Families are much more likely to attend a game when it is warmer than 70 degrees than a November day where the weather may be lucky to get out of the 40s. You will certainly get the diehards to attend, but casual fans (especially with young families) are much more likely to stay at home where it is warm.
EDIT: clearly did not read Marshall_Lucky's response.
Good post. I agree wholeheartedly
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