Agree to disagree.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.
I wonder if NIL has anything to do with it.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 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.
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.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.
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.
without digging too deep -unranked doesn't look too significant to me; yes we went from 30 unranked to 2I 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.
not sure why you are purposely making this difficultIt'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.