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So, What Now?

So, What Now?
Holly Birch-Smith - IlliniBoard

I will now describe the Illini Football fan mentality in one paragraph:

We're ranked #24. We have a ranked vs. ranked game on Friday night at Nebraska on Fox. There will be a TV showing our game in nearly every bar in America on Friday night. And I can guarantee you that if we're trailing 17-0 in the second quarter, the fan discussion will immediately turn to "you know, if we don't beat Purdue, there's probably a really good chance this is the first of five losses in a row."

I don't mean that in a "gosh, Illinois fans are so negative!" way. I'm not saying this is some dominant team and people need to get on board. I'm saying that we have fan scars, and with the schedule over the next six weeks, a lot of things might happen that will send us to that awful "oh God it's happening again" place. (Or we could beat Nebraska and Penn State and find ourselves saying "my God are we going to make the 12-team playoff?")

Yes, we're ranked, but we will be favored in one of the next five games. If we go 2-3 over those five games, school should be canceled the following Monday for a campus-wide celebration. In case you haven't looked ahead, here's those five games:

at #22 Nebraska
at #10 Penn State
home for Purdue
home for #18 Michigan
at #9 Oregon

We're ranked, but we're almost certainly going to go 1-4 over the next five because four of the opponents are ranked and three of those matchups are on the road. And the opponent in the game where we'll be favored? We haven't beaten them in Champaign since 2010. Yes, you read that correctly. Purdue has gone 66-103 overall since 2010 and they have beaten us in Champaign six consecutive times.

I know. I get it. Different regime. Things are different in Champaign now. I agree. I am simply noting that this five game stretch is the most difficult five game stretch we've played in decades. There's no telling if Michigan and Oregon will still be ranked when we play them (Penn State will regardless of what happens this weekend), but care to guess the last time we played four ranked teams in five games?

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