Illini Football: 2008 Season - Roster Information - History - Future Schedules
Illini Basketball: 2008/09 Season - Scholarship Chart - Depth Chart
NCAA Football: Preseason Rankings - Bowl Tie-Ins
Other UI Sports: Volleyball - Soccer

Friday, May 23, 2008

Predict the final 2008 Big Ten standings:

"interactive feature" time... I want to know how people think the Big Ten standings will end up...

I also want to toy around with Google Docs and their "live form" feature

This is also in anticipation of actually doing and following through with a "Big Ten Pick 'em" this fall... and the only way that will work is if i don't have to do any work... so behold the wonders of the internet.

Here's what you do:

CLICK ON THIS LINK


1.) Enter a name for yourself (so people can see what you have chosen)


2.) Select what school you root for (at some point if we get a couple lurkers i'd be interested to see what their predictions are)

3.) Select a school for First through Eleventh place. Make sure you pick a different school for each slot and you fill out the form, because if a school shows up twice your vote won't be counted (and there are no hanging chads here).

4.) Watch the table below grow:




How the fans of each school voted



































Thursday, May 22, 2008

Its time for Crean Cleaning!

Ok, I'm a streak updating this site...

A little while ago (yesterday) I posted about how IU is doing something right, and I felt guilty about it and promised to come up with something showing how pathetic they are in the near future...


well, just when you think we'd have to wait for more high-comedy... another rat has jumped ship, as Brandon McGee has now been booted from IU.


Lord knows if anyone is actually reading this, but if there is someone who is stumbling across this block of text, then someday an IU fan is bound to stumble across it... and they are probably wondering "Haven't we suffered enough!? Why are you picking on IU? blah blah banners blah..."

Its a fair question, and the answer is simple enough: No they haven't suffered enough.

This is a program who's fans were non-existent my first two years at Illinois (2003/04 and 2004/05)... but all of sudden once Mike Davis was fired, out of seemingly nowhere IU fans started to pop up and rant about the return to glory for IU and how the rest of the Big Ten should be shaking in our banner-less arenas because IU was back to pwn our asses.

Then they settled for Kelvin Sampson.

Then that little SOB Eric Gordon proceeded to lie to our entire fanbase for a summer, and stab us in the back. IU fans then laughed at us, proclaimed victory and the return of IU to its "rightful" place atop the Big Ten, where they would no longer have to deal with us unwashed peasants ever again.

They said Sampson was a great recruiter, he had learned from his "mistakes", and promised to bring fine, upstanding young men to Bloomington to represent Hoosier Nation.

Well, that was a wonderful fantasy, except Sampson wasn't requiring kids to go to class, overlooked countless team violations, and apparently did very little actual coaching (remember Eric Gordon's "he lets me do whatever I want" statement the week IU came to Champaign?). Not to mention he couldn't figure out exactly what NCAA calling rules were.

The result, he left IU in shambles... and as of today there are freaking TWO scholarship players left... (if you could former walk-on Kyle Taber)

the roster at IUHoosiers.com is hilarious:

THREE freaking players with numbers next to their name... that because the rest of the 08/09 Basketball team hasn't even set foot on campus yet... IU has had to enter their recruits into the roster to make it appear less embarrassing than it really is. Only 2 players in the entire program have played NCAA basketball before.

Oh by the way.. there are at least rumblings that Crawford might be gone soon too.. (purely speculation and unverifiable)

IU's lineup for next year includes ONE FREAKING PLAYER over 6'8"... 7 footer Tijan Jobe who averaged a massive 4 pts / 4 rebounds playing for OLNEY CENTRAL COLLEGE... (also, as a sidenote, NJCAA.org has his stats listed at 3 pts/game and 3.074 rebounds/game... but hey, IU needs to inflate their spirits somehow)

The funny thing is, the second Crean was even rumored to be going to IU, Hoosier fans were already starting to pat themselves on the back and brag about how "everything is going to be just fine"...

well, it might be, but its gonna be a few years... and until then, they better just learn to deal with the ridicule and chorus of laughter coming from the rest of the college basketball world, because Indiana is truly the laughingstock of NCAA hoops these days.... and the NCAA hearings have yet to come...


...although it should be noted: is there really anything left of the IU program for the NCAA smash up this summer? The NCAA could take away 5 scholarships and STILL not make IU shuffle its roster.

Don't expect much from the NCAA... there isn't anything they could possibly do to IU that their own hubris hasn't done to themselves.

My hope is that good kids like Matt Roth and Verdell Jones don't have IU fans turn on them... because given the way the "saviour of Indiana Basketball" Eric Gordon left Bloomington, I shudder to think what will happen when the IU fans don't realize their current situation is their own damn fault and turn on kids who are left after the Spring Crean-ing in Bloomington.

It's on like Donkey Kong

The opening day clash of Illinois - Missouri has been set for a 6:45 PM CT kickoff on the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.


to quote Flounder:
This is gonna be GREAT!

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

...about the schedule

sorry if this is terribly difficult to read, but below is a chart of all the kickoff times and TV clearances that have been announced thus far (accurate as of May 21, 2008, check back later for more)

First column is school name (duh)

Next 6 columns show the number of games each school has on each TV station. These are

  1. RED: ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 Primetime game.
  2. ORANGE: ABC Afternoon game (usually 2:30PM)
  3. PURPLE: TV Station yet to be announced, but kickoff time announced (these are all 11AM games that will either be on ESPN or the Big Ten Network)
  4. BLUE: Big Ten Network games (mostly 6 or 7PM primetime kickoffs)
  5. GREEN: ESPN or ESPN2
  6. GRAY: "Other"... right now the only one is the NBC game for Purdue @ Notre Dame... games like Illinois/W. Michigan and Wisconsin @ Fresno State could wind up on other networks as well.
The Next 3 columns represent how many games each school has at each of the 3 major time slots (Early being usually 11AM kickoffs, Midday being 2:30 or 3:30 kickoffs, Evening being anything after 5PM)

Just in case you are wondering, all times are Central... you people east of Illinois can cope.

After that is the Big Ten schedule chart, showing the games each team plays each week, colored according the method mentioned above with the kickoff time in (). Black boxes represent Bye Weeks, games that are in white boxes haven't set TV clearances or kickoff times yet.




A couple thoughts RE: our schedule.

  1. With Michigan State @ California occupying the 7PM game on ABC, it looks like Illinois will probably be playing earlier... this backs up the rumors that we will be playing at ~6:00PM on ESPN.
  2. Those of you hoping for Ohio State @ Illinois under the lights might want to temper that... Ohio State already has 3 games on ABC during primetime lined up... will they get a fourth? Working in favor of OSU/Illinois in prime time is the fact that no other Big Ten game that weekend comes close to standing out, unless there is a major cinderella story in the Big Ten.

People still evidently attend Big Ten basketball games

yes, I got this off of the Minnesota site..

Big Ten captures 32nd straight NCAA attendance title, averaging 12,978 fans per game... 838 more fans/game than the 2nd place SEC did.


Two things of note here:

1.) Illinois, at 16,618 fans/game (thank god we sold out before the season started) was, at least on paper, the 11th most attended basketball team in the nation

2.) the ACC was NOT runner up this year... as the Southeastern Conference crept into 2nd place. This seriously questions the god-like status of the league than can do no wrong (to be fair, it also highlights the fact that schools like Duke, BC, and Georgia Tech, while popular, play in smaller gyms)

Well, at least Indiana is doing one thing right...

I hate for my one post in quite a while to be about something IU HASN'T f*cked up... I'll throw together something of moderate length laughing at them in the near future...

From Peegs... their stadium expansion is starting to take shape



If it makes you feel better, I believe construction delays have pushed the project back (thankfully any delay's at the real Memorial Stadium in Champaign have been minor and the project appears to be on schedule)...

and I still can't figure out why they are adding luxury seating to the SOUTH side of the stadium (the side the sun would shine on)... maybe they wanted the open end to face campus.

so setting aside the cheating basketball program, their slime ball ex basketball coach, their screwed up athletic department, the fact they are stuck with a mediocre football coach, their pathetic non conference schedule, the impending NCAA sanctions, all the athletes who were calling the shots in the basketball program and had to be flushed out of town, James Hardy getting arrested AGAIN, Kellen Lewis smokin' the refer, and their OTHER slimeball ex basketball coach...

...at least their cozy yet-uninspired football facility is starting to look like an actual big ten venue and not an over-sized MAC stadium.