Back The Team To Gain A Victory

Fine, I'll write about it again. I've written about it way too many times already, but all of these notifications on my phone alerting me to yet another response under my attendance tweets inform me that it's time for further clarification. Especially since my words are being twisted and twisted until water drips from them.

Let me give you an example. I spend a lot of time framing my words (which is difficult to do when restricted to 280 characters). To reduce my notification workload, I'll often establish the frame before painting the picture. But then every response seems to ignore the frame. Like this:

My frame: "I fully understand that I don't view this like most of you view this."

My picture: "But dammit I want to be in and around this beautiful stadium as much as possible."

The response: "You need to understand that you don't view this like most view this."

It is that same experience over and over and over. Just go scroll through my timeline and read some of the replies. I put together this six tweet thread where I asked in the very first tweet for readers to set aside "wins = attendance" for a moment and hear me out: college football can be enjoyed on a simple "let's go, boys" level and ticket purchases can just be support, not a referendum on historical underperformance. All over the country, fans simply support the local college team.

One of the first replies to that thread, paraphrased: "Right but it's a bad investment." I hope you can understand how hard I bang my head on the table when I attempt to artfully sow some seeds on Twitter only to have someone come along with a bulldozer to immediately dig everything up. I spent a lot of time on that!

This leads to, well, everything you've heard about me. That I'm trying to let you know that I'm a better fan than you (never said it, never even implied it). That I'm providing cover fire for the school as part of some "if you provide me with a credential, I'll write positive articles about the coaches" agreement (believe it or not, "support from the fans is the lifeblood of college athletics" is actually something I believe). That I'm "gatekeeping" and/or "the fan police" (is evaluating the Illini ethos not what I quit my job to do? I'm not covering recruiting over here. What do you think a columnist does?).

I understand the generational differences here (my kids recoil at any statement implying some absolute truth). I understand that Illinois is a "basketball school" and, as a football guy, every sentence I utter will be met with "poor guy just doesn't understand that no one will ever care about football in Champaign." And yes, I often overemphasize a point on social media, much to my detriment, in an attempt to place a thought firmly into the Illini conversation (I kinda feel like that's my job, too).

And yet, even after responses and clarifications and article after article, I still feel like the majority of people are at best confused by what I'm saying and at worst intentionally trying to obfuscate. So I'm going to attempt to explain my position once again. Ready go.

I really do believe the lyrics of Oskee-Wow-Wow. It's not an act and it's not an attempt to curry favor with the university. I, Robert Rosenthal, believe this:

When the team trots out before you
Everyone stand up and yell
Back the team to gain a victory
Oskee-wow-wow Illinois

Now more than ever, "back the team to gain a victory" is how teams will win in this recently altered college athletics landscape. That's financial support (NIL and otherwise), that's butts-in-seats support (gameday environments = recruiting wins), and that's even vocal support on third down. Schools in surrounding states (like Purdue and Iowa State) have figured it out. Iowa has had it figured out since I was a kid. Yet we're mired in "do not support unless your list of fan demands are met." Boos and empty seats are the way to change things, not cheers and packed stadiums.

I was discussing this on Slack today and I'm going to cheat here and just flat-out cut and paste from one of my responses there. Lazy writing, sure, but I feel pretty good about the frame I built so here we go:

All I've asked for (from everyone) is this: take the way you think about this subject – a direct correlation between wins and attendance – and set it aside for one day. You can go back to it tomorrow. Just set it aside and consider that there might be something else at play here. You just have to consider it. Not believe it, just consider it.

The thing I'm saying is missing, and the thing Iowa State and Purdue (Purdue!) seem to have, is a very simple "this is my school and I want to go to cheer on the boys" culture. Think... small clubs in the English Premier League. Brentford fans have no designs on ever winning the league. They know what's stacked against them. But when Arsenal comes to town, there's no chance they'd miss it. A chance to knock off mighty Arsenal and send those stupid Gooners back to east London where they belong? Wouldn't miss it for the world. Even though they walk in the stadium knowing there's very little chance they'll win.

That exists at Purdue right now (just think about it - 3-8, last place in the Big Ten, the Saturday after Thanksgiving when we can't even get 14,000 people through the gate, and they nearly sell out). It has existed at Iowa State well before Campbell rebuilt things (2015 attendance with Iowa State coming off 2-10/finishing 3-9 and Illinois coming off 6-6/finishing 5-7 - 55,000 for Iowa State, 41,000 for Illinois). It exists all over the country to different degrees. As I said in that one tweet, Troy, Alabama has no business drawing 28,000 fans in a town of 17k. But hey, the game might be fun.

There's a pathway to attendance that does not have a single thing to do with wins and losses. It's 100% possible to approach your college team like your high school team ("hope the boys win") and not your professional team ("hope the GM dies").

When I say "I can't believe the Kansas game isn't a sellout", that's why. I'm saying "we have a living alumni base of 850,000 and I can't believe there aren't just 10,000 or so additional alums who would make the simple decision to back the team to gain a victory." We're all OK with Purdue football figuring this out and not Illinois?

Purdue football (4-8 last year, worse than 5-7 Illinois) distributed 407,739 of their 430,087 available tickets last season. They sold out their September night game against Syracuse. Yes, they were 8-6 the previous season, but Illinois was 8-5 that same season. Purdue and Illinois have very similar histories the last few decades (eight bowls for Purdue since 2005, six for Illinois), so how is it that they've figured out "let's go on Saturday and cheer the boys on to a potential upset" and we haven't?

Believe me, I fully understand the reasons some cannot go ("I go to every game and you should too" has never, ever been my point). I understand life. I went to maybe five total games from 2002 through 2006 before getting season tickets again in 2007. Night games are difficult with kids? Saturday cross country meets prevent game attendance? Money is tight? Been there. Totally get it. And no worries, because we're a big enough alumni base in a big enough state that your "can only make one game per year" can combine with everyone else's "might make one or two" to equal a few sellouts per year.

But it doesn't. Sellouts since 2010, according to the media guide (no, Arizona State 2011 wasn't an official sellout):

October 2, 2010 - Ohio State 24, Illinois 13
November 12, 2011 - Michigan 31, Illinois 14
September 10, 2016 - North Carolina 48, Illinois 23

(The last sold-out game we won? The Matt Eller field goal to beat Iowa in November of 2008.)

Yes, Illinois football has sucked out loud for 25 years. Yes, on the surface, asking "why aren't there more fans here?" when we've only been to 11 bowls since I moved into my dorm room 33 years ago sounds crazy. But ever since we didn't sell out the Michigan State and Purdue games in 2022 after we moved to 7-1 and #16 in the polls (Kansas, that same season, got to 3-0 and immediately sold out the next three games because fans had a chance to possibly see the first 4-win season in 13 years), I've been saying "it's more than wins and losses - there's a deeper disconnect."

You probably know this, but it's worth repeating: Bret Bielema has won 12 Big Ten games his first three seasons when the previous four coaches won 4, 4, 7, and 6 Big Ten games in their first three seasons. Competitive football has returned to Memorial Stadium, but sellouts have not. And I've been openly pondering why for the last 20 months.

I know your reasons. You've told me. Ticket prices and hotel room scarcity and long drives to Champaign and "we're Illinois football and we can't be trusted." You have specific theories on how we blew a tire at the end of each of the last two seasons and that killed ticket sales momentum. And yes, even one Twitter responder yesterday said that he won't attend because he can't watch the rest of the games on TV. I appreciate the honesty.

I'm simply saying that we're in the support era. Players start receiving a hefty share of the revenue next season. The Big Ten and SEC have created a "big two, little two" dynamic in college football (just look at the preseason top-25) and it's gonna be a crazy battle with the field reduced. Over the next decade, these war bonds are going to matter.

I mean, just this week Illinois announced the Investors Society as a way to find a specific group of high-end donors committed to helping Illinois stay on top (read: helping Illinois land and keep the next Johnny Newton/Terrence Shannon combo in Champaign). You may dislike the way this is all going, and some of you might flip the off switch for good, but this is the new reality. Now more than ever, fan support will = wins. Tickets, merch, donations - all of it. Back the team to gain a victory.

And it concerns me that there's such a large "not one single cent" contingent. You think it's crazy that I go on and on about this on Twitter; I think it's crazy that an Illini fan would be looking at the changes on the horizon and not be concerned about falling further behind. It's down to us and Maryland for the "surly fanbase not making much noise in the stadium" award (Northwestern just defaults to "no noise at all"), and I don't want us to win that race.

So all I can do is cite my experiences. When I say that I've been to nearly every stadium the last three years, that's not a brag. That's not "look at my fan cred." That's "I need to make sure everyone knows that some of these stadiums, even places like Indiana and Purdue, are really making a fan support surge at the moment." The only game I've experienced that was as angry as Memorial Stadium was Wisconsin in 2022 (and they fired their coach the next day). Even Minnesota fans, after both of our wins there in 2021 and 2023, seemed to be mostly "we'll get 'em next time, boys."

"We'll get 'em next time, boys" is about to be monetized on a massive scale across the country. I fear we'll be well behind in that race. And so I'm hitting the tornado siren button over and over until someone breaks into the room and takes away my access to the button.

I don't want to fall behind. I want to scream my lungs out when Kaden Feagin runs over a poor Kansas safety at the goal line. I want to beat #22 Kansas and tweet things like "rank us, AP Poll - I dare you" the following week. I want to be shirtless in Lot 31 when they come to kick us out that night.

And when I decide to walk home, I want you to honk at me as I'm standing in front of Merry Anne's, pondering whether I really do need a diner stack before bed. When I do decided to just go home, as I cross Neil Street dodging U-Hauls, I hope you can hear me signing the words of the school song.

Back the team to gain a victory
Oskee-wow-wow Illinois