1. Please don’t try to conflate things. U’re giving geography lessons when that literally has nothing to do w/ anything.
2. So Illinois has no reason to be bad, huh? So like, I dunno, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, & Iowa aren’t next door to them; u know, the TRADITIONAL power house schools whose recruiting areas happen to be CHICAGO. Lol
3. I’m from Chicago, so pls don’t try to educate me about MY city. Chicago is not a football city, it’s a basketball city. Have we had some studs come out in the past few yrs? Yes; but, it’s not a recruiting hot bed, & the few that are high priority 9.7/10 go to other schools
4. I’m going to assume that even if Illinois had thousands of things to celebrate, they would still be celebrating a historic moment from a century ago, b/c it’s an historic moment, so not sure y u’re taking the liberty to take a crack on them for this.
Hilarious. I'm from St. Louis, I've got relatives all over Mizzou and Illinois.
Goodness...So one of the 10 largest states in the country is incapable of turning out enough football talent...because of other states? Come on, now.
I know Chicago is more of a hoops town, but I'm talking about the infrastructure, the schools, the competition. You could put 20 million people in North Dakota, but I wouldn't assume they would suddenly become a football hotbed. Illinois is big enough to produce football talent for ONE university, given that there's no "Illinois State" to contend with, or even Northwestern (for most of its history).
If nobody can manage to go into Illinois and convince the best talent to stay home and rep for the home state, that's on Illinois. I'm not going to blame the states of Michigan and Ohio for that. Somehow, Nebraska has managed to keep more homegrown talent in a FAR ****tier state than Illinois has. I'm actually saying something NICE about Illinois, there seems to be enough state and city pride to be able to keep ONE state school doing well in football.
Relax, I realize I struck a nerve. I'm not gonna take it personally if you trash-talk Mizzou. All the other Big 10 schools have had their ups and downs, it just seems like Illinois should have more to show for the past 80 years. And, no, I'm not giving them credit for a national championship in a year when they were ranked #3 and #4 by the two major wire services.
I get it, there's competition. But I think the University of Miami has had more success recruiting top talent out of Chicago than Illinois has had, at least over the past 40 years. Maybe Illinois needs to hire a visionary like Schnellenberger who will focus on keeping the homegrown talent in-state.
You know I know who Red Grange is. Great player, early childhood hero of mine. But a lot of time has passed.
The throwbacks look cool. The Illini need to build some more recent memories too.
