Definitely agree that there are going to be differing degrees depending on who we beat, and how the season goes. I just think no matter what, 7 wins will and should be considered a success, especially by the national media.
Pregame: Illinois vs Toledo, Saturday, September 2nd, 6:30pm CT, BTN
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Dang, reality really sucks at times!
Our B1G schedule is one of the easiest out there....
No doubt! Hopefully that translates to wins
Won't be getting any easier once USC and few of the other big boys join in
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the national
- the Front Range
Hey now, my dad’s Illini won the Rose bowl in 1964. I’d take that
But you’re right. Great points. This season is very important to the program, the coach, the fans.
I don’t agree here... While our OOC isn't the easiest there is, all of those games are very winnable and we'll only not be favored at Kansas, which while a P5 team, isn't one that will make good teams shake in their boots. And as for B10 schedule, with no OSU or Michigan, and PSU and Wisconsin at home, in my opinion, this is the easiest schedule we might ever have. And that's especially true going forward.
Will we take advantage? I don't know. But if we don't get 7 wins, it's difficult to blame the schedule, unless you're of the opinion we should just schedule 3 cupcakes OOC every year no matter what.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
Our conference schedule is about as favorable as possible, which is why I think a winning record there (5-4) is obtainable (it has been 30 years since the Illini had back-to-back winning B1G seasons!). The non-conference schedule is not as favorable as traditional years for us. When the non-conference schedule was released, initially, I thought 2-1 was the floor, but Kansas is much better than they were when the schedule was announced and it will be a true road game (they are likely saying the same about us) and Toledo is always consistently solid. I still think we will go at least 2-1 non-conference, but it is nowhere as certain as was when schedule was announced. That is what I meant by doing us favors (it initially looked like slam dunk 2-1 if not 3-0 non-conference schedule). It is conceivable, but very unlikely that Illini start 0-3 if the team comes out flat against Toledo.
Of course I think the Illini should schedule more difficult non-conference games. I always hated the FCS game at the beginning of the year. It is a given win but does nothing to get the team prepared for tougher competition. I will not blame the schedule if the Illini only get to 5/6 wins, but the first 3 weeks of the season will be an extreme challenge for this team. In my opinion, the Illini must go 2-1 non-conference to get to 7+ regular season wins, which makes this first game against Toledo very important. For the record, I expect the Illini to be prepared and come out with fire and cover the spread. I personally believe the challenging start of the season will be good for this team, as I trust the coaching staff much more than prior staffs. I will maintain that 7+ wins will look great from a national perspective, as it will likely require the Illini to have a winning B1G record (unless the Illini go 3-0 non-conference).
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In that vein, and I know they are better now, but many here are penciling in Kansas as a loss. I'm hoping old Kansas shows up, no way this was thought of as a tough win when it was scheduled...
Edit, should have read ahead, just echoing others.
What Illinois fans have to realize is....we aren't all that. It's amazing to me to see post after post after post about us vs a MAC team and how they are so far beneath us. They aren't. I've been an Illini fan for over 50 years so I'm not a hater...I'm a realist. Toledo is a legit threat and anybody that doesn't think that doesn't know football especially when MAC teams load up (and strategize) just to beat a B10 team. It's their season. We need to plan accordingly. If we don't....it will be their season.
The New York Times has their college football special out with rankings of all D1 teams. Illinois chimes in around 52 and Toledo at 69. Certainly not a gimme for Illinois.
Kramerica Industries
- Greenville, SC
To the New York Times...
I got my baby sister to come back to and Illinois football game since she graduated in 1975, and she brought along her Stanford grad husband (who wore an "I Married Into This: I" for the occasion). She'll be with us at the FAU game this year. Hubby, too. I'll keep working on her. She'll be season ticket holders too before I'm done.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
1) Not sure the posts you are reading, but virtually everybody on this board sees this as a competitive game and are taking it seriously. More importantly, the players are definitely not looking ahead to the game @ Kansas. It is one Toledo fan who is making it sound like we are playing high and mighty and overlooking them. There is a reason why the spread is single digits.
2) This is a big game for Toledo, but hardly their season. Of course they would love to knock us off, but they have eyes on another MAC title. That is their true season.
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
Agreed. There was a small window in early summer where folks weren't aware Toledo is one of the best MAC teams, but now people realize this will be a challenge (and a foolish scheduling decision). I am not casting the current staff or players to this history, but as evidence about how the Illinois fanbase will be uneasy about these games, here are the last 10 Illinois football games against MAC teams:
2019 Eastern Michigan 31-34 L
2018 Kent State 31-24 W
2017 Ball State 24-21 W
2016 Western Michigan 10-34 L
2015 Kent State 52-3 W
2013 Miami (OH) 50-14 W
2012 Western Michigan 24-7 W
2011 Western Michigan 23-20 W
2010 Northern Illinois 28-22 W
2008 Western Michigan 17-23 L
Historically, Illinois has really struggled when playing good MAC teams. Of the seven MAC wins, only one was against a team that would finish above .500.
Illinois struggled in general during that era.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
It’s true. If Illinois doesn’t bring their A-game, they lost this game.
What gives me confidence:
If you look at our offensive line + our defensive front 7. Of those 12 players, ~8 will make all big ten. That’s a strong group.
And if you’re that strong in the trenches, you typically beat MAC teams.
It’s college football. Anything can happen. This is a good Toledo team. But I think we’re better and I see a close win.
If Illini go 5-7, not really sure that what you spelled out is “narrative” but rather reality. I like everyone on here feel good about where Bret has the Illini and expect at least a solid season this year. If that doesn’t happen, unless Illini suffered catastrophic injuries all that you listed is reality. Or at best the rebuilding of Illinois isn’t anywhere near complete.Agree with everything you said. Attendance also naturally lags - our attendance in 2009 when we were 3-9 was way higher than we were drawing in 2011 when we started off 6-0. Why? Because 2009 was still enjoying coming down from the Rose Bowl high, and fans in 2011 were waiting to see if we were for real! Spoiler alert ... we were not.
2023 really is huge. I hate to be melodramatic, but the national narrative constructed by people who don't follow our program really could vary this wildly with the following records this season:
5-7: "Arkansas Bielema" is real Bielema, and Illinois was "good" (still finished losing 4 of 5!) because Chase Brown was a beast and DeVito was better than expected. Once he was gone, they literally went right back to the same losing record as 2021. Plus, they played in the Big Ten West. Yeah, they're better than they were under Lovie but not by that much, and their ceiling will be random 8-win seasons and mostly 6-6 seasons. It's just hard to win there, and this is the best coach they have had in a long time.
9-3: Bret Bielema flat-out knows how to win in the Big Ten, and this isn't your dad's Illinois; they finally have someone who can realize that program's potential. He took them from 2 wins to 5 to 8 to 9, with this latest season being an IMPROVEMENT after losing a ton of talent to the draft! Memorial Stadium has even turned into a hard place to play! It really isn't hard to win there, they just needed to wait for the right guy, and that looks to be Bielema!
Again, might sound dramatic ... but this year can make or break our ascension, so to speak. Perception is fragile.
Thankfully, I don’t think that will happen. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made In Bret We Believe my team name for this year’s confidence pool.
Over 45k now for Toledo.
First of all, that MS paint mock up looks amazing! I could have been fooled to think that is actually the East Main looks like.
I did some math and renovating the East Main stands to be identical to the West Main would remove 4,350 seats (30 rows). As noted all of these are under the overhang of the East Balcony and thus are not visible to most of the stadium - and many would have obstructed views. Reallocating that capacity to the the Horseshoe/reno'd South Endzone would increase current Horseshoe capacity (10,010) by ~43%. Coincidentally 4,350 is exactly the seating capacity of the North Endzone so that is a helpful visual to gauge how much additional seating could be removed from under the East Balcony.
The other alternative could be to not reallocate the capacity elsewhere and leave the stadium with a new capacity of a little over 56,000. As badly as I want to see Memorial sold out on the regular, I'm not sure I'm a fan of that option.
There's a couple Illini homers mocking the matchup, but yes most realists respect the game
Illini92and96
- Austin, TX
Wow, for some reason I think that really adds a finished look to the stadium. I must be a symmetry lover. I wish something could be done to the north end zone to make it look more integrated vs just plopped in. IMO its less about 56k vs 60k capacity vs looking like a cool stadium and being full (and loud!). Neat mockup Fighter!
The problem with moving to those seats is when the stadium is packed it is loud from goal line to goal line. You move people to the horseshoe they are too far away.
It would be interesting if we start to consistently sell out if the lower rows that had covers on them would be opened up. I think you could still get close to 70k in memorial stadium
A lot of crowd noise comes from the actual acoustics of the stadium more so than the amount of fans and location of the fans. Like honestly when I was at the Big House in November, it wasn't much if any louder than Memorial was against Iowa, and there were obviously more than double the amount of people in Ann Arbor than in Champaign. If a renovation is built vertically more than anything, kind of like the original 2016 rendering or what Iowa did in the last few years, the fans would be closer to the field, bringing the source of the noise closer and more importantly the tall structure would contain the noise similar to how the pressbox contains a lot of noise right now.
As for the other part of your comment, just doing some super quick bad math based on a very hasty look at the sellout watch post above, idk if it'd do that much. Adding seats to the rows that are permanently blocked off (with the seats removed) would maybe add 1k seats (being generous probably). cause each section only loses about 100 seats from that area. The estimate is based on 131 having 1220 seats and 127 having only 1010 seats. Adding in the seats that have had covers occasionally might get us another couple thousand seats total. But the tarps have been used on and off over the past few years and I don't think they were there last year.
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