I’ve talked about this before, but I think gcg and Florida are dead on, and our success and the Illini’s demise are intrinsically linked. The longer they stay down, and the further down they go, the better it is for NU. Look at the recruiting battles. 24-0 in NUs favor? What if that was 12-12, as a stronger and more consistent Illinois program would likely get to. Those are 12 kids we wanted running around as Pumpkinheads that would make us weaker and them stronger. We don’t offer enough kids (nor can we) to be able to sustain our success with them getting a handful, maybe a big handful, of the kids we want.
We want a better trophy game? I’d like to see trophy games added for Wisky (would probably be their 8th or 9th) and Iowa.