Elite? How about competent? We can review again that we can't get get to the second weekend even with 2 AAs in basketball. We have seen the shit on the football field since last October.
All I am seeing is: Well, he is doing better than the guys before him. That makes him the taller midget. People are not raising hell, like they would be at say MI (like when Rich Rod was there) or OSU, to make the admin consider that it would beneficial to their bottom line and national status if they took the revenue sports seriously (instead of hampering them with BS admission rules etc.). Do you really think the admin takes this stuff seriously?
You realize those football programs have been multi-generational powerhouses with only relatively minor blips in the continuity of their high levels of success, right?
As such, we aren’t even on the same planet as them in terms of athletic budgets or facilities. They attract the very best coaches in the business and pay them whatever it takes to get them. They attract the very best players from the HS ranks and from the portal. Their stadiums hold almost double what ours does. It’s practically a self-fulfilling system.
Meanwhile you seem to think all this can be fixed by people raising hell? Where do you think the pressure and buyout money comes from when our sports teams suck? The people raising hell! Our donors are willing to pay a top 10 basketball salary.
Brad Underwood has not been incompetent here. He needs to win in the tourney, but he’s been grossly competent in almost every metric since rebuilding the program.
Bret Bielema took a horrific 2 win team and went 5-7 and 8-4 in his first two years. That is not incompetence.
Football has taken a big step back this year after losing a shitload of talent, and everyone knew it would happen. Most people paying attention expected 5-6 wins at best. Which is still definitely on the table at this point. That Wisconsin loss was devastating in every way, but trying to have some perspective here.
The real test will be to see what adjustments are made and how we look going forward as his guys mature and he instills the type of system that made Wisconsin successful. FFS, Barry Alvarez himself only won 11 games total his first three seasons. (Yes he broke through big time in his 4th season, but it should be noted that this was when Michigan and Ohio State were in a relative lull under Moeller and Cooper and teams like Iowa, NW, MSU, etc were weak)
Illinois was basically an afterthought for the entirety of the 2010s in both sports. We certainly haven’t turned the corner yet, but I’m sure having a lot more fun now that I was then. Lots of progress has been made on multiple fronts. But no, Whitman hadn’t managed to snap his fingers and undo decades of mismanagement and turn us into OSU or Michigan.
A ton of blame still lays at the feet of Guenther for declining to participate in the athletics arms race, and yes, the admin for not understanding the value of successful athletic programs. Whitman has done a lot to reverse that, but it takes time. This was always going to be a slow build, and it’s a lot easier on the mind and heart to remember that.
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