Joe John is going to have a field day with this one.

“Illinois could go to the Big 10 championship game”….Robert…Robert..Robert…

Robert,
It appears you, like Andy Dufresne, have ignored Red’s advice about hope being a dangerous thing that can drive a man insane. When/if your Illini football redemption finally does happen, I expect to see you standing in the rain, arms outstretched to the sky.
BTW…the background music was surreal given tonight’s events.

Joe John,
I generally cringe when I see you’ve commented, but have to say you took the high road this time. Well done.

I am not laughing like you are.

You sound like a punch drunk boxer. I always appreciate your view, because sitting here in Florida, I need context but:

Our offensive line is somewhere between bad and mediocre, regardless of injury. So Mike White would teach them to pass block, and have Reilly throw the ball. I know we are thin at wide receiver, but Nate proved again tonight that he locks in one receiver and lets the defense read his eyes. We should play Reilly, use Kenny Knight, Hardee, and hopefully Millines, Davis, Villunas, et al, and throw it down the field. Then Josh, Donovan, and Dami would have a chance, IF, they could at some point start squaring their shoulders and run forward instead of sideways. And if we had Vic back, well then we might make 6-6. I hate to say it but Good Night Irene. Our coaching staff is learning this not the MAC, and we are about to lose a bunch of good players to graduation. Just wait for next year. I hope for Beckman & Co., but from here the outlook is dark. Go Illini.

ATO,
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I like the Shawshank reference. Andy Dufresne crawled through a river of S#@$ just before his “standing in the rain” moment.
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I certainly do hope Robert gets his own “standing in the rain, arms outstretched to the sky” moment…because one thing is for sure. We’re definitely standing in a river of S&#% right now.

I hardly took his “we could go to the b1g championship game” as a polyannish or optimistic statement. I think his point was about just HOW bad the b1g is that that is within the realm of possibility with us being this clearly awful. One crazy win @ Wisconsin and beat crappy teams at home and you’re there. The point wasn’t that it was likely. The point was how ridiculous it would be if it happened. I thought.

I see a deep abyss for Illinois football. This coaching staff clearly does not have the “right stuff”. We are wasting the talent we have on defense because we have inexperienced coordinators. Actually, we have an inexperienced head coach. Even with the injuries and other legitimate excuses one could manufacture, the truth of the matter is that we are financially committed to a head coach making well over a million dollars who seems to have about as much potential as Tim Brewster. The overall talent of the team will diminish next year. The fiasco we are seeing on the field against slightly above average teams is probably nothing compared to what we will see in the future. The current team looks soooo bad because of the dismal coaching.

I love the earlier post, “We are standing in a river of….” Simple, but true. For any reasonable hope this season as we move forward and try to step out of this river, we need to beat PSU. They are down and undermanned.

Jeeeez. I know it’s not the same thing, but the U of I has multiple Nobel Prizes for research on semiconductors and the invention of the transistor. (Thank you, John Bardeen.)

and we get pantsed by Louisiana Tech?

Quite simply, the caliber of athlete able to achieve a full scholarship to the U of I should be able to defend f>(<ing La Tech. And outscore them, as well

78 yards was the length of the pass play LT scored on coming out of halftime.

We had shut them out, 10-0, in the second quarter, but they struck quickly at the beginning of the 3rd quarter, burning our best CB. score: 28-17

So, when we got the ball back and faced a fourth and inches in our own territory? punt it away:

punt it away – “we weren’t in 4th down territory”
punt it away – “gotta trust your defense”
punt it away – “it’s the right thing to do”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong to the infinite on some myriad of levels i haven’t thought of. Why haven’t i thought of them? Well easy – I’m not a genius. Heck, maybe I’m not even of average intelligence, but tonight I think I learned that I’m smarter than the head coach of IL, and I’m not even getting paid millions. You see, there are these things called VARIABLES.

Ok, here’s what we knew based on the game we’d seen so far:

1) We can’t really stop them
2) The quarter where we stopped them – well, let’s see, umm, we just didn’t let them have the ball. we took advantage of the fact that it’s against the rules for them to score without possession of the football.
3) We got smacked in the mouth after half time because we had to give them the ball (it’s the rules – we got the ball first). They eviscerated the length of the field in one 78 yard play. It would follow that a sane person would conclude that the “battle for field position” wasn’t really a battle at all. it was more of an amicable agreement where the terms were basically “if you are so stupid as to give us (LT) the ball, anywhere, even in Tolono, we will promptly score” It is ludicrous to think that at this point it really matters just where they are positioned on the field. They have proven that they can score with a short field, a long field, and from outer space. I’m not doggin’ our defense – that’s another issue, but it is what it is.

So what do we do? Give them the ball. No, why would we take the risk on a 4th and inches where we might be able to:
1) Keep the drive alive, and there was a good chance of this – we were moving the ball on them, our running game was relatively competitive and even at times superior to their ability to stop it.
2) KEEP THE BALL OUT OF THEIR HANDS!
3) Rest and possibly regroup (with proper coaching) our shell-shocked defense
4) Up our chances of at least scoring 3 and getting the game within a point.
5) KEEP THE BALL OUT OF THEIR HANDS!
6) Worst case scenario – we turn it over on downs after an unlikely line-of-scrimmage stuff or botched snap, and they score, in about 20 SECONDS less time than it took them after the (safe bet, conventional wisdom) punt!
7) Listen to J, for chrissakes! and. . . .
8) KEEP THE BALL OUT OF THEIR HANDS!
but no, we gave them the ball, and everything, predictably, unraveled from there. A competitive game became an embarrassment . . . .31-points-unanswered embarrassing.

. . .and for that reason, i have officially given up on the Beckman era. Granted, I was never really on board, but this is just too reminiscent of the “gotta stop ‘em” post game press conference from his last year at Toledo – it screams “I am who I am and I’m not gonna change!”. it escapes me how an AD could watch that (if he did) and still hire this guy. If you don’t give your team the best possible chance to win with a decision such as he made, you’ve just as well hired an airplane with a trailing banner reading “I HAVE A LIMITED CEILING BECAUSE I AM NOT THAT SMART YET I AM STUBBORN”

I’ve been an IL fan for life, and football has always mattered much more to me than BBall. for this reason, games like this pain me more than they probably or possibly should. I really don’t expect much. i have no desire for them to be a juggernaut in a juggernaut conference like Alabama in the SEC. I really truly don’t. IL football would become uninteresting to me at that point because then I would know that the bad things (money money money, winning at all costs, unadulterated corruption the game of college football, douchebag coaches who win but make you throw up in your mouth, insane fanbases that want to win no matter what, etc. . .) had won. All I want is for us to do just a little – so ever slightly – better than we should and then, when the stars align, experience that dream season which is far beyond the comprehension of the typical USC, Alabama, LSU, OSU, even PSU fan can possibly experience. I don’t ever want us to sacrifice our standing as an academics-first institution to the golden altar that is big-time NCAA money-grubbing.

But my question is this: Why can’t we get the smarter coach? UI is an institution that stakes its reputation on its academic status, right?. Should we not realize that we cannot (and really have no desire to) out-recruit certain other colleges for the elite talents that do not meet this standard? It would and should follow that we shouldn’t consistently expect to be able to land the type of freak athlete that is commonplace at each position in certain SEC schools. Faced with this disadvantage as (to a greater degree) schools such as NW and Stanford which are nonetheless competitive and even (in Stanford’s case) contenders. All i want for us to do is to capitalize on our inherent advantages over schools such as NW and Stanford and BE WHERE WE SHOULD BE! I know we can out-recruit NW, if we could only match their level of coaching, we’d be WHERE WE SHOULD BE!

i would be so excited to be an IL fan if we would only consistently BE WHERE WE SHOULD BE! What amazes me is how much time and energy I continue to invest in a team that is consistently below where it should be, yet how ecstatic I’d be with a team that just outsmarted the juggernauts, as it should, because the juggernauts are all brawns, not brains.

i really don’t honestly care where that “should” is, I just want to be there. I’m so sick of being fairly consistently below it for an entire lifetime (39 years) of fandom that I am about to give up hope.

Just got back to Chicago, unfortunately took the trip all the way down today.
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I am that guy that never leaves a game early, pretty much regardless of score. Football, baseball, hockey, doesn’t matter, I’m always around at the final horn. Today, for the first time I can remember, I left early…with 11:00 minutes left. 11:00 minutes. And thousands upon thousands left MUCH earlier than that. I simply could not take it anymore, especially with a 2+ hour drive back home yet to come (which feels like 5 hours after a game like that). And I felt it was completely justified and I don’t regret it. Sounds like I missed some awesome Katy Perry. Next time. My friend and I were trying to come up with another football game that we’ve been to that was such a letdown and a blowout considering the expectations, night game, etc… and we couldn’t come up with one. Thoroughly depressing.
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Robert I kind of had your attitude of it being so sad that I was laughing at our misfortune. This is Illinois football, this is who we are, and this as fans is what we go through. Get our doors blown off. Want to kill a fan base? Congrats, you just did it for the rest of this year. Night game, toss up game, new era…blowout. Attendance the rest of the year will be brutal. Who, besides the diehards, would travel down for that game next week? Or any other game? Mike Thomas…good luck. I don’t envy you.
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What’s even more ridiculous is you look at the total yardage, first downs, 3rd downs, etc…you’d never think we lost by 28. But turning over the ball 17 times and letting up huge plays will do that for you.

I realized that when Beckman refused to go for it on 4th and inches and thus GIVE THE BALL BACK TO LA TECH that we are in for a very long stretch of very, very bad football until he is either fired, his contract is bought out, or Mike Thomas is fired and the next AD brought in who then fires Beckman. Gee, have we been through that cycle before? The issue is finding the right coach and it could have been Coach Kill at MN or any number of better coaches.

BTW, the head coaches at Stanford and Northwestern obviously have more grey matter regarding astute football issues and decisions when it matters during a game.

Rolled out of bed. Can’t sleep. Had to check and see what else has been posted since I typed earlier. Couple thoughts:
1) Stoner reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about for years. I know times are different and I know his tenure ended badly, but why did everyone see immediately when Mike White came that things were different? We actually completed passes that were in the context of a designed play. And it didn’t look that hard. And we didn’t have multiple new 4 and 5 star recruits (well, maybe a few juco transfers). We had a new coach and the game was fun again.
2) 16th’s post really has me pondering. Lots of emotion coming across as I’ve read it over a few times. “Be where we should be”. I’m not exactly sure where that is either, but I know it’s not 2-2 with the 2 wins coming against patsies and the 2 losses, against good, not great, teams being total demoralizing, unacceptable blowouts.

16th thats an awesome post. You should email it to Mike Thomas. If the cupboard was bare, I think getting the doors blown off would be acceptable. But the cupboard isnt bare yet…thats next year. So if Beckman cant get this group going…how is their any hope for the future?

Robert didnt watch on TV and some of you commenting were obviously there and didnt see the game either…but Nate was jawing on the sidelines with his teammates..and there were alot of jawing after Hawthorne/Green messed up that punt. This team is definitely in disarray. Looks like Beckman is very close to naming ROT his starter (based on what he said on the radio afterwards)…so whether ROT can rally the troops or if the team is Nate’s and they just come apart…be interesting to see.

Penn State will not be an easy game..they played better last few weeks and remains to be seen whether their coaches get them fired up over the illini coaches in State College thing.

A little context – as you may or may not have deduced from my moniker, I live in San Francisco – 16th & Mission is a bart (subway) stop.
I consistently rub shoulders with Cal and Stanford grads, and I am a 49ers fan. Though I have a slight preference for Cal in the big game (state school, after all, like my alma mater UI), I have nothing but admiration for what Stanford has done both during and post Harbaugh era so far. NW isn’t anywhere near them of course, but still, if I didn’t admire them I’d just be being petty and needlessly denigrating (or perhaps trying to invent a rivalry where there isn’t one). I have no problem with what Fitz has done, even if he is just maintaining what Barnett/Walker built. That in itself is something, given the inherent disadvantages. I know it’s sacrilege but perhaps it’s time we stopped vilifying Fitz and his ilk and started wishing we’d find someone like him.

Harbaugh was the QB for the hated scUM during the first Illinois football game that I attended live (the 3-3 tie in 1985), but I can have only appreciation for what he has done with Stanford and now the Niners. In fact, it’s becoming a sad reality that I view Niners games on Sunday as a cathartic mouthwash for what I have had to spend hours witnessing on Saturdays, and a bittersweet tease for what could be. That said, I’d gladly see the Niners go winless if only it meant the Illini would get to “WHERE THEY SHOULD BE”, whatever you might think that is. I have my own ideas, and we’re not even close.

I’ll add my name to the list of those who strongly opposed punting on 4th and short. But giving up on a coach after 4 games for that one bad decision? Do you really think we even win the game if we convert that? We may well have turned it over that drive.

Well said by 16th, but to be fair, it should be pointed out that it is really hard to stop an offense from outer space. There is a decided potential energy disadvantage in such cases.
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Tolono though…now that’s an indictment. And it’s true.

I had to “watch” the game through gametracker, which is better than nothing, but doesn’t leave me an informed viewer. Perhaps that is why the one play that sticks out for me was when we went for it on 4th and 4, and ROT took the sack.
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I went nuts. How does a B1G qb not know to throw the ball away?
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And that’s when I realized just what Coach B is working with; players who still need to master the fundamentals. Robert spoke about how much time was devoted to fundamentals during Camp Rantoul. Evidently, there is still a long way to go.
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We have a steep hill to climb. I cannot conclude that saturday’s effort means the coaches can’t coach. It might just mean it will take a lot longer to get the team up to speed than I had hoped. As long as we see progress, (which is hard to tell with all the injuries and youth on the field), I’ll be patient. But if ROT makes the same stupid mistake three games from now, I’m gonna break my computer.

The players are not up to speed because the coaching staff is not up to speed. It is that simple.