Fan fests and season ticket promotions.  Chicago scrimmages and St. Louis dome games.  Quality opponents and flashy video intros.  All in the name of “promoting excitement and enthusiasm around Illini Football”.

Just win, baby.

Flashy recruiters and a solid recruiting budget.  Mining the greater DC and Jacksonville areas for talent.  A two-story weight room and a fancy recruiting hallway complete with video walls and life-size posters.

Just win, baby.

The idea for this Point came to me when watching a video of the recently completed weight room and Recruiting Center under the north endzone stands.  The camera showed the nice digs that are certain to impress every Jimmy and Joe that walks the hallway.  The pictures of the Illini in the NFL made me strain towards the screen trying to read all of the names.

And then they came to the bowl game wall.  Oof.

What struck me is this:  We’re doing nearly everything right.  We’ve doubled season ticket sales.  We’ve recruited better than we ever have.  We have a flashy new tower rising out of the west balcony, a real student section combined with the band, and the latest and greatest Nike uniforms.  Only one problem: we don’t, um, really win very much.

It’s crazy, isn’t it?  We’ve improved nearly every aspect of the program, from the practice facilities to the coaches salaries, and yet we’ve been to two bowl games in the last 10 years.  The feeling I can’t shake is that we’ve had it backwards.  We think that we need to build it so the wins will come, when the reality is that all we need to do is win so we can build it.

If I was in some DIA meeting back in 2002 where the topic of how to grow the program was being discussed, right after the video staff guys mentioned 4th-quarter in-game highlights and the stadium staff discussed the concessions needs and the idea for the recruiting center and weight room was being tossed around, I would have raised my hand and said “you know, we could do all that, or we could, um, maybe… win?”

If you asked any member of the football staff, from the coaches to the administrators to the SID office, they would all tell you the same thing. “OF COURSE that’s what we’re trying to do.”  It’s most certainly the whole point of having a football program and a Division I University.  Everybody wants to win.

Then why have we suffered through 6 home games when 90% of the BCS schools at least 7?  Why did we wait until late 2009 to attempt to fix some glaring “they can recruit but can they coach” assistants?  Why do we take our three FBS non-conference games and schedule Missouri-Cincy-Fresno?

Want the best example of how we have it backwards?  BTN’s “The Journey” in 2008.  I’m sure the meeting when that was finalized went over great.  I’m sure everyone left the room thinking “wow, what fantastic exposure for Illinois Football”.  I’m sure we thought every recruit from Jacksonville, IL to Jacksonville, FL would watch and run to the fax machine. Did anyone think about how adding the cameras and the notoriety might, you know, affect our win total?  Was a discussion had about how the constant presence of cameras might give the players a sense that they’d arrived when, in fact, there was much more work to do?

Just. Win. Baby.

Wins are the cure-all.  Wins will send fans down from Chicago in droves.  Wins will sell more tickets than any Family Fun Fest or Pork Day would ever dream of selling.  Look no further than the mid-80′s to see that there are tens of thousands of Illini Football fans DYING to flock to Memorial Stadium to watch a winning program.

We have something that Northwestern and Purdue and Indiana and Minnesota don’t:  The potential for top-end fan support.  Fan support at Ohio State and Michigan and Penn State has sustained their programs for years.  The money is there for the top coaches and the top assistants and the top facilities to maintain a top program.  And as Wisconsin proved under Alvarez and Iowa is proving under Ferentz, winning can start a ball rolling down a hill that the whole state will get behind.

So if the potential is there and the money is there and (now) the facilities are there, why aren’t we there?  I really think it’s this simple: He haven’t focused on winning.  We schedule like we assume we’re already there.  Our players celebrate on the field like we’re there. We print fantastic promotional posters to make it look like we’re there.  That’s all good and fine except, you know, we’re still nowhere near there.

So let’s start here.  Let’s schedule like 2011 for 4 consecutive years. Let’s eliminate Chicago scrimmages for those same 4 years and focus on maxing out every single on-campus spring practice. Let’s recruit some glue guys who might not have the bench press but definitely have the heart.  Let’s remind everyone in the program that we’re nowhere near there. Yet.

Let’s put the cart back behind the horse.  Let’s win, baby.