Week 8 Polls - Illinois #18 in AP Poll

LouHenson · Oct 16, 2022

I am hopeful that with the portal, nil, and a solid coaching staff we can be relevant in football. We for sure are a competently coached team. It really has been awhile since you could say that.

Pikeillinifan · Oct 16, 2022

What also helps is the incredible amount of $$ that is being driven by media deals, which is primary due to football. The administration has finally realized major investments - even if it’s driven by donors - are a necessity or we will be left behind.

thehass · Oct 16, 2022

Great win. Cannot look past Nebraska. Our players seem super focused and on a mission. Would like to see more creativity inside the 10 yard line on offense because getting 7 instead of 3 will be the difference maker in many games.

dbeaverfg · Oct 16, 2022

ChiefGritty said:
It takes two to tango.

Tim Killeen and Robert Jones have been very capable, practical stewards for the University during a really challenging period when those jobs have become as hard as they've ever been.

The same message has been very effective for both the University administration and the football team, and a big change from Illinois' recent past: don't beat yourself.

Agree to disagree.

bartwa · Oct 17, 2022

Roundball Sage said:
To continue that thought... yesterday both Alabama and Southern California also go down to defeat. But that's not as notable as the rise of the Illini.

The old legacy powers will always attract talent just by their name plate, but the overall landscape is changing. Teams like the Illini and Kansas and Kentucky and Duke (and maybe even Indiana to an extent - all roundball powers by the way) are moving up in the gridiron World as well. The Portal is evening the field and more teams now have a legitimate chance at success and rapid improvement from year to year.

A legacy power has to work really hard to fall off that high perch. Michigan and Tennessee fell off for a while but got themselves way back up again. And today, Nebraska is still trying to figure out what went wrong and how to get back to respectability after 25 years of program slippage.

Illinois deserves to be football power. There was no good reason why Wisconsin and Iowa and Michigan (all neighborhood States) should be consistently successful while the Illini were so long trying to close that gap. (Yes, it goes back to leadership but that still left the question of why those States had that and not Illinois). And the State of Illinois has plenty of local talent.

For a program... it all grows from the top down. You got the right guys at the leadership positions... and success is going to be the result.

I wonder if NIL has anything to do with it.

MDchicago · Oct 17, 2022

ChiefGritty said:
I bet the math of it isn't so much that a bunch of voters shot us up in their ballots, it's that now we're on everybody's ballot whereas last week we were rated by some people but also had a lot of 0's.

Definitely true.

By the numbers (Link), Illini went from unranked by nearly half (30/62) last week (range of 18-25 in votes with Illini ranked), to ranked by nearly everyone (60/62) this week (range of 15 to 23 in votes with Illini ranked).

The two outliers with the Illini unranked this week are writers from Syracuse and Utah, while Illini's highest voter (#15) is a writer from Cleveland. Bob Asmussen of the N-G has the Illini at #18 this week.

EyeoftheIllini · Oct 17, 2022

I’m guessing not many people here predicted Illini football would be ranked right now, but I’m really gonna go out on a limb and say no one predicted the football team would be ranked higher than the bball team the third week of October.

ChiefGritty · Oct 17, 2022

dbeaverfg said:
Agree to disagree.

It's deeply emotionally important to some folks that they get to imagine the academic leadership of UI twirling their mustaches in the bell tower of Altgeld plotting to ensure we always lose at sports. To each their own.

Scoregasm · Oct 17, 2022

ChiefGritty said:
It's deeply emotionally important to some folks that they get to imagine the academic leadership of UI twirling their mustaches in the bell tower of Altgeld plotting to ensure we always lose at sports. To each their own.

blackdog · Oct 17, 2022

ChiefGritty said:
It's deeply emotionally important to some folks that they get to imagine the academic leadership of UI twirling their mustaches in the bell tower of Altgeld plotting to ensure we always lose at sports. To each their own.

I got to meet Robert Jones a couple weeks ago at a tailgate. He was walking past and someone called his name so he came over, took some pictures, and chatted for awhile before heading off to where he was going. He also stopped by again on his back after the game! Seemed really excited about what was going on with the University and the football program. Kept talking up different things that were happening and trying to get everyone pumped about it. To be fair it was a mostly MBA student crowd so potentially some future rich donors among the bunch.

Greensboro · Oct 17, 2022

ChiefGritty said:
I bet the math of it isn't so much that a bunch of voters shot us up in their ballots, it's that now we're on everybody's ballot whereas last week we were rated by some people but also had a lot of 0's.

without digging too deep -unranked doesn't look too significant to me; yes we went from 30 unranked to 2

total points went from 117 to 433 = +316 (/63 voters ~ 5 pts/voter)

Bottom 30 (simplication) - if you add up the bottom 30 voters in wk8 (number unranked in wk 7) I get 140 pts (140/30 4 ~4.8 pt/voter for bottom 30)

Illinois Fighting Illini Football at College Poll Tracker

collegepolltracker.com

Mr. Tibbs · Oct 17, 2022

ChiefGritty said:
It's deeply emotionally important to some folks that they get to imagine the academic leadership of UI twirling their mustaches in the bell tower of Altgeld plotting to ensure we always lose at sports. To each their own.

not sure why you are purposely making this difficult

it’s not that past admin was anti athletics , it’s simply that they could not care any less about it than they obviously already did(n’t)

Ikenberry came from PSU in spring 1980 and things changed instantly .

you want to call it all luck or bad luck - I don’t buy that