So How Does This Compare To Other Seasons?

When traveling I have a lot of time to think. And in the fall, I'm always thinking about Illini Football. Therefore, while traveling to our latest Big Ten game – a game that took place 2,135 miles from Memorial Stadium – I had a lot of time to think about Illini Football. And as I thought those thoughts while traveling by land and by air, I realized that I needed to do a better job of explaining what should happen and what has happened.

I talk a lot about Postgame Win Expectancy here, and I explain how it works, but I don't think I do a good enough job of explaining why I care about the statistic. If I mention it on Twitter, I'll usually get several responses saying "I don't care what should have happened in the game, I only care what happened."

Me too. I know some of you might not believe me when I say that, but me too.

The reason I like talking about it so much is because I like studying what might happen. But what might happen has nothing to do with how you should feel about what's currently happening. What's currently happening is all that matters. That's where the wins and losses live. Never confuse my "Illinois should have been 6-6 in 2006" with "Illinois was 2-10 in 2006."

The fact that the 2006 Illini should have won six games according to 2nd Order Wins (5.56 to be exact) means absolutely nothing. That was a 2-10 team. It will forever be a 2-win team. Did it tell us that 2007 might be a little better than we thought because we had the structure of a 6-6 team with a lot returning and not the structure of a 2-10 team with a lot of starters returning? Yes. But that's what might happen and not what did happen.

Is that enough italics for you yet?

I feel like the best way to describe all of that is to look at former Illini teams and compare them to this team. We'll get to that in a bit, but first I need to A) look at where we stand in the I-N-I this week and B) explain the difference between "got lucky" and "did the Other Stuff." Here we go.