Losing at home to the lowly Purdue Boilermakers.
This is 2016 Illinois Fighting Illini football.
Yep; the Illini were a double digit favorite today and they still lost 34-31 in overtime. They essentially committed time burglary against their fan base in this one.
That base witnessed a huge step back for their program on Saturday October 8th, 2016.
All week long, the Purdue football community made sure to let me know just how awful Boilermakers football really is. They anticipated a true demolishing, and who cold blame them given the Boilers’ total no show the week before at Maryland.
You know all the cliches- it’s just one game, don’t get too high after just one win, or too low after just one loss.
Well, Purdue has been the laughingstock of Big Ten football for all of the Darrell Hazell era. They are to college football what the DePaul Blue Demons are to college basketball.
Yet here we are- the 2016 Illini football team lost to Purdue anyway; and in deserved fashion. They gave up 459 yards of total offense; 231 yards rushing to the Boilers. All that preseason optimism and excitement, due to the hire of Lovie Smith…it’s all gone now. Those hopes and dreams, for 2016, are dashed.
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/784902092041424896
Actually, Smith’s rebuilding project is going to be so vast and time consuming that you can likely forget about 2017 too. A majority of starters and key players on both sides of the football are graduating seniors. Today was a really long day for Illini football fans; both literally and figuratively.
Lovie Smith knows the team is in a bad place right now and he told like it is in the postgame press conference.
“We’re not there yet,” Smith said afterward. “Right now we’re not a good football team. When you’re not a good football team, you have to keep working to become a good football team. We’re based in reality.”
“Everything is troubling,” Smith said. “The loss is troubling.”
It was a slow moving contest that went into overtime and tensed the nerves of a base that includes a huge overlap of Chicago Cubs supporters. The college football game threatened to overlap with the Cubs versus Giants NLDS Game 2. Obviously you know what’s going to take priority there!
For now the Cubs, yes the Cubs, are the bright shining beacon of hope.
Maybe the Cubs are a good example too, as they did a total tear down and then rebuild over a long term time frame.
Video of the game winner from mu seat!!! pic.twitter.com/UalnkkALWv
— Hammer and Rails (@HammerAndRails) October 8, 2016
That’s Illini football right now- things are going to be very bad for quite awhile, so you must dig your heels in for the long haul in order to experience the highs later down the line.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.