With their money, instate talent, population
How is this possible?
Shouldn't they rival OSU, Mich, PSU
2019 Football season

Ranked at what? Not much detail...

They’re still recovering from firing Ron Zook. 3 bowls in your last 5 years topped by a Rose Bowl should NEVER get a coach fired from bottom half B1G schools, as it is more likely you’ll regress into what Illinois has become than improve your standing.

As an Illini, it is beyond frustrating...

(05-20-2019 11:56 AM)templefootballfan Wrote:  With their money, instate talent, population
How is this possible?
Shouldn't they rival OSU, Mich, PSU
2019 Football season

Sorry, I see now!

Yes that's bad.

(05-20-2019 11:56 AM)templefootballfan Wrote:  With their money, instate talent, population
How is this possible?
Shouldn't they rival OSU, Mich, PSU
2019 Football season

Last time a head coach there had back to back winning seasons was John Mackovic.
90'91'. He left for Texas and Lou Tepper coached the bowl game.

Overrated

(05-20-2019 11:56 AM)templefootballfan Wrote:  With their money, instate talent, population
How is this possible?
Shouldn't they rival OSU, Mich, PSU
2019 Football season

The premise that Illini football has a heap of inherent advantages isn't completely accurate. Money really isn't a thing, the State of Illinois is practically bankrupt. Talent and population is a bit misleading, even though U of I is the flagship of a large state they don't hold an iron grip on a huge portion of the Chicago area like Mizzou does in St. Louis, Ohio State in Cleveland, etc. The area is divided with a lot of support towards Notre Dame and other Big Ten schools, meaning that good recruits don't often look at U of I as a default option to consider given how the program has been so inconsistent and/or bad for years now. In fact South Bend and West Lafayette are closer to Chicago than Champaign-Urbana, while Madison, Iowa City, East Lansing, and Bloomington are less than a hundred miles from the same distance.

To your point though that doesn't mean that a good coach can't turn them around. They're more than capable of becoming a program that contends for the division on a semi-regular basis, or at the very least wins around seven games every year. But that takes a culture change like Art Briles did at Baylor, Mike Leach at Wazzu, etc. Lovie Smith is building them from the ground up, I'm not sure if he'll work out but someone will do it eventually.

Illinois has been lousy for as long as I can remember, and that goes back a long way. In the 72 years since the end of WWII the Illini have only won 43.6% of their games. That includes a healthy diet of MAC and FCS schools in recent years. They have played in 17 bowl games over that span.

If they had any natural advantages, you would think that would have shown up by now. It hasn't.

(05-20-2019 11:56 AM)templefootballfan Wrote:  With their money, instate talent, population
How is this possible?
Shouldn't they rival OSU, Mich, PSU
2019 Football season

Cuse was ranked #109th last year, how did that work out for the Orlando Sentinel?

These so called experts basically follow about 10 teams and make WAGs on the rest.

? Was about Illinois
Not the paper

(05-20-2019 09:46 PM)templefootballfan Wrote:  ? Was about Illinois
Not the paper

And I was shooting a hole in the premise that the ranking was valid.

(05-20-2019 11:56 AM)templefootballfan Wrote:  With their money, instate talent, population
How is this possible?
Shouldn't they rival OSU, Mich, PSU
2019 Football season

They're not that rich as an athletic department, and they're under immense pressure by the state to not overspend, since they're trying to shore up their insane pension crisis. Also, the talent relative to the population in Illinois is pretty bad, there isn't much interest in collegiate athletics, and those that are interested have their allegiances going in a million different directions, like others have said here. Not too many kids grow up Illini fans, from what I've seen.

Illinois needs to be thought of more like a northeastern state sports-wise than a Big Ten state. It's in a unique cultural position within the Big Ten footprint, and not in a good way.

(05-21-2019 04:19 AM)Mav Wrote:  

(05-20-2019 11:56 AM)templefootballfan Wrote:  With their money, instate talent, population
How is this possible?
Shouldn't they rival OSU, Mich, PSU
2019 Football season

They're not that rich as an athletic department, and they're under immense pressure by the state to not overspend, since they're trying to shore up their insane pension crisis. Also, the talent relative to the population in Illinois is pretty bad, there isn't much interest in collegiate athletics, and those that are interested have their allegiances going in a million different directions, like others have said here. Not too many kids grow up Illini fans, from what I've seen.

Illinois needs to be thought of more like a northeastern state sports-wise than a Big Ten state. It's in a unique cultural position within the Big Ten footprint, and not in a good way.

You can think of Illinois as the hole in the middle of the B1G doughnut. It's part of it, but it doesn't add much.

Looking deeper into this, I may have been too hard on Illinois. Of the four schools that constitute the doughy center of the B1G (Northwestern, Illinois, Indiana and Purdue) the Illini actually have a slight edge over the other three in performance since 1980 (roughly the time of the FBS split).

Indiana has been the B1Ggest bottom feeder, winning only 28% of conference games (39% overall) during that span. Must be a regional thing.

(05-21-2019 04:19 AM)Mav Wrote:  

(05-20-2019 11:56 AM)templefootballfan Wrote:  With their money, instate talent, population
How is this possible?
Shouldn't they rival OSU, Mich, PSU
2019 Football season

They're not that rich as an athletic department, and they're under immense pressure by the state to not overspend, since they're trying to shore up their insane pension crisis. Also, the talent relative to the population in Illinois is pretty bad, there isn't much interest in collegiate athletics, and those that are interested have their allegiances going in a million different directions, like others have said here. Not too many kids grow up Illini fans, from what I've seen.

Illinois needs to be thought of more like a northeastern state sports-wise than a Big Ten state. It's in a unique cultural position within the Big Ten footprint, and not in a good way.

You're correct that Illinois is not as rich of an athletic department (although to be fair, very few are rich compared to Ohio State or Michigan), but the state funding and pension issues have absolutely nothing to do with any athletic issues. I'm obviously an Illinois guy, but the overall lack of success of the athletic department can't be hung on the state overall. The Illinois athletic department definitely has the money to compete and it's totally on them (not the state) with hiring mistakes and lack of vision for it not occurring. The current AD (Josh Whitman) is clearly a great fundraiser (to the point where we're on the precipice of getting a hockey program after decades of just talking about it along with other huge football and basketball facility upgrades), but the jury is still out on his key coaching hires. I can't emphasize this enough: it definitely isn't a problem about money at Illinois.

That being said, Illinois isn't destined be some type of permanent sports black hole, either. This athletic department had a basketball national championship game appearance with Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl berths in the first decade of this century. Also, the state of Illinois does NOT have poor talent (whether talking about football or basketball) relative to its population - that statement is patently false. On the football side, it's simply average compared to its population - it's not boomingly overrepresented with top recruits (such as Louisiana or Alabama), but it's also not underrepresented relative to its population (unlike, say, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts). For basketball, the state of Illinois is one of the best pound-for-pound recruiting areas in the country.

As with any school, getting the right coach combined with the right talent is outcome determinative. Illinois doesn't (and probably won't ever) have the advantages of schools like Ohio State and Michigan, where those schools are permanently entrenched in the power structure no matter how they might perform in any given year or period of time. However, Illinois also isn't some type of backwater with no history or basis upon which it can be at least a competitive football program and upper tier basketball program in the Big Ten. It's a historically middle class football member and upper class basketball member of the Big Ten that has performed like a lower class member in both sports for the past decade.

(05-20-2019 10:03 PM)TexanMark Wrote:  

(05-20-2019 09:46 PM)templefootballfan Wrote:  ? Was about Illinois
Not the paper

And I was shooting a hole in the premise that the ranking was valid.

Can't be as bad as CFN's predictions. But I agree, there's probably very little thought given to most of the schools.