Blip

45 days until the football season. That's kind of insane. When you combine the whole "there's no angst at all" thing that I wrote about a few weeks ago (there are small, meaningless concerns right now but overall, the Big Two programs are as healthy as they've been in my lifetime) with the fact that it's July and there's no news coming out (football coaches take vacation before camp, basketball will occasionally release a summer scrimmage video), the season can really sneak up on you.

And it's a great feeling, right? I just can't get over the lack of anxiety. The knowledge that if something goes wrong, it will be fixed. An example:

2023 was a rough calendar year for both football and basketball. January through March was one big "if this basketball team isn't going to win on the road AT ALL then this team isn't going anywhere in March." The team went nowhere in March.

And then football was the same way. So much of the great 2022 team had graduated and it was going to take a bit for the next phase to take off. It was as maddening as can be in terms of fourth quarter fears. The last six games (and I'm gonna try to do this from memory):

• Beat Maryland on a last-second field goal.
• Lost to Wisconsin when they scored a touchdown with 30 seconds left.
• Beat Minnesota by going 80 yards in three plays in the final 90 seconds.
• Beat Indiana when John Paddock threw for 500 yards, winning the game in the final minute.
• Lost at Iowa when they broke one big run with three minutes left.
• Lost to Northwestern at home when Casey Washington had an 80 yard TD reception in the final minute... but we failed to convert the two point conversion and lost by two.

I don't think I got the order of the games right but I'm going to leave it. All of the last six games being decided in the final two minutes was impossible for those of us who live and die with this. It ended with yet another 5-7 to match all of those other one-win-away-from-a-bowl seasons we'd endured over the previous three decades (1995, 2000, 2002, 2008, 2015) and, at the conclusion of the Northwestern game, I lacked the ability to stand and felt to my knees. ROUGH calendar year to attend every basketball and football game, home and away.

But then, once the calendar turned, EVERYTHING turned. Basketball went to the Elite Eight in March of 2024. Football won 10 games in the fall of 2024. And we've been riding the wave ever since:

It helped me realize something. 2023 was a blip. 2022 basketball had won the Big Ten. 2022 football had gone 8-5 and was one yellow flag away from beating #3 Michigan. 2024 basketball went to the Elite Eight. 2024 football won 10 games. 2023 was a blip.

"Blip" has helped me frame the rest of the decade differently. If the 2026 football team struggles, it's a blip. If the 2028 basketball team struggles, it's a blip. I needed someone to come find me at the end of the 2023 Northwestern football game and just whisper that one word to me - "blip". It would have saved me so much devastation.

And I mean devastation. I was inconsolable after that loss. You'd have to know the history of everything I'd written about wanting back-to-back bowl seasons to boost the program (and how we failed to do that in 2000 and 2002 and 2008 and 2015 and only did it in 2011 when we fired the coach) but this was exactly what I tweeted after we lost to Northwestern in 2023 to fall to 5-7 and miss a bowl:

I still believe that. It wasn't some reaction in the moment that I regret saying weeks later. Three decades of hopelessness only briefly interrupted by epic seasons, failing to get that sixth win so many times, the 2022 season telling me we might finally have our coach, and then six consecutive down-to-the-final minute games leaving every nerve frayed at every end... only to see it fall short on a two point conversion. It's the most postgame pain I can remember. 2000 Michigan was anger at the refs, 2015 Northwestern was anger at the administration, 2023 Northwestern was pure, un-cut pain.

In retrospect, all I needed to hear was "blip." With the ability to look back, it was a youth-induced outlier, not the norm. We'd win 10 games the next season. And for basketball, 2023 was "we didn't surround Terrence Shannon Jr. with the right mix." 2024 was "we surrounded Terrence Shannon Jr. with the right mix." Blips.

I guess this is just another way to write "we have it so good right now" for the fourth time this summer. There's such freedom in understanding that "bad" equals "blip." Illini football fans know "good = blip" deep in our souls (2001 and 2007 were followed by nothing, which means they were the blips) but now the three seasons surrounding 2023 (8-5 in 2022, 10-3 in 2025, and 9-4 in 2026) state that 2023 was the blip. And same for basketball. The seeds since 2021:

2021: 1-seed
2022: 4-seed
2023: 9-seed
2024: 3-seed
2025: 6-seed
2026: 3-seed (and a Final Four)
2027: #3 preseason?

2023? BLIP. (And a blip we would have killed for between 2014 and 2020.)

So yes, it's a summer like we've never experienced. I tried to come up with a late-80's comp but there's just not one. Summer of 1990 comes close (football had just gone 10-2 followed by 8-4, basketball had been in the Final Four in 1989) but the Bruce Pearl investigation was hanging over everything. Summer of 1990 we were only a few months away from learning that we'd be banned from participating in the 1991 NCAA Tournament. There was a cloud over everything.

Summer of 2026? Champaign must be in the desert because it's been uninterrupted sunshine. Sure, football has to replace a ton and we're going to spend the winter wondering if this basketball team can live up to these MASSIVE expectations. But after decades of "will we ever have a football program?" and "will we ever return to being ILLINOIS BASKETBALL?", both questions are now fully answered. Any restructuring seasons in the second half of this decade?

BLIPS.