Disconnect

All I can say is that there's a disconnect. There are the people in the tailgating lots and in the stands, and then there are the Illinois Refuses To Pay NIL The Scoreboard Is The Reason We Aren't As Good This Year Bobby Hauck Killed My Cat people. As someone with a foot in both worlds, the disconnect is so incredibly strong this season.

First, my credentials. Because of my mentions tab and the 27,000 Twitter followers, I'm more aware of fan opinions than all but maybe three people on earth. You might scroll Twitter a lot, but I have this collection of fan thoughts directed at me (in my mentions tab) nearly every day for 17 years. That's nothing to brag about. It's just a function of numbers. I'm the curator of a very odd museum.

Second, because I've only missed three home games in the last 15 years (and I've attended every road game but one since 2021), there's not another person on earth who can report back to you on Illini fans at home and on the road like I can. There are other media traveling to every game, but they're not tailgating before and after (nor are they ever in the Illini section in the stands).

Again, I'm building my credentials for the point I'm about to make. I'm telling you that this is all I do. I have more data collected than anyone else. My life is Illini fan interactions, in person and on Twitter. This is about data collection here, not "rank the best fans because I'd be up there!" or anything of the sort.

When I look at that data, and when I chart that data over the last 15 Illini football seasons, there's never been a larger disconnect between the two. Ever.

2013? The fan experience and the in-person experience were nearly exactly the same.

2019? There was a little bit of a disconnect. People were rushing the field after the Wisconsin win yet social media remained skeptical of a turnaround, even after the four game winning streak. (And social media was correct.)

2011? This was when the in-person experience was significantly more negative than social media. Part of that was Twitter being fairly new, and part of that was impatience with Zook landing highly ranked classes yet not winning on the field, but 2011 was a disconnect in the opposite direction.

There have been times when the experience was exactly the same (the anger of Not Ideal Day and the loss to Northwestern at Soldier Field in 2015 was universal - even happy-go-lucky Robert wrote an angry, "shame on the administration" article that night). There have been times when the experiences feel vastly different (2022 Iowa game had "we finally got the Iowa monkey off our backs" in the tailgate lot and "this was basically a loss" online). But today's game had the largest disconnect I can remember.

And please don't head down the very simple "social media gave idiots a voice and these are just idiots to ignore" path. Hear what I'm saying. Stay with me.

The Three Tenets Of In-Person Illini Football Fandom In 2026:

1. "This is all we've ever wanted." This one is the key. There's a relaxed mood. It's a bunch of people who had to ask themselves the question "why do we do this?" over and over (for decades!) no longer having to ask themselves that question.
2. Related to this, there's this appreciation for college football because we are part of the conversation. Best way I can explain it is that games like this Ole Miss-LSU matchup going on right now hit different, as the kids say, now that we're in the college football conversation. Is Collin Dixon a top-5 receiver nationally? I HOPE EVERYONE EVERYWHERE IS TALKING ABOUT IT!
3. Even with this, there's a subdued vibe in Memorial Stadium. We all know it. To be honest, we're embarrassed of it. We bring friends and they ask "why isn't it louder?" and we have to say dumb things like "we don't really know how to do this yet?" Myself included. I wish I was the guy making a lot of noise on third down but I have the same "well if I'm the only person yelling, is there any point?" thought.

The Three Tenets Of Online Illini Football Fandom In 2026:

1. A referendum. Every single thing is a referendum. Every moment for the team they follow is one big "IS THIS GOOD ENOUGH?" debate. Discussions about, say, player rotations are basically nonexistent now. There's not "do you like Morris or Cox at corner?", only a bunch of tweets that could all begin with the word "resolved:" followed by a statement on the result of that particular referendum.
2. A misunderstanding of how NIL funds can be distributed by schools and using that misunderstanding immediately lay blame. Most people, even today, don't actually know how NIL works (we're talking NIL above revshare here) and so they revert to the way their dad talked about cheap owners of professional teams. Kramer telling Jerry that the big corporations "just write it off" comes to mind here.
3. An obsession with the interior of Memorial Stadium (from people who mostly don't attend games there). Scoreboard takes. Discussions of photos of the student section. Attempts to say the most shocking thing (like "you know, I'm really beginning to hate Larry Gies for caring only about the stadium and not the roster.") If people only knew.

Take this silly attendance thing. I tweeted on Wednesday that the SIU game was close to a sellout and if people needed extras for today, order them ASAP. Several came after me with certain "no way that's correct" gifs. The game did sell out. And that made people... angry for some reason?

When the tweet dropped that the game was sold out, I pointed out the disconnect that I'm writing about right now. I said that keyboard warriors are telling you that the entire fanbase is angry while I was 119th in line for Lot 31 at 6:30 am. (And yes, that's significant. Four years ago today there were maybe five vehicles waiting in line when the lots opened.) Here were some of the actual responses to that tweet:

• It’s only sold out bc they gave 10,000 tickets to local high school bands lmao
• I don’t get it -If the reports regarding our small NIL budget are true, isn’t this a failure upon the AD and head coach? Esp. after the great two years we had. It’s nice to tout sellouts but how about getting more NIL $ so that we can compete better and continue the sellouts?
• Ok Robert, do you think the scoreboard was a good use of funds when we will struggle to make a bowl game?
• There is an assload of SIU ppl here today
• If anyone is a keyboard warrior it’s you. Your wife is the breadwinner so you can LARP as a legitimate sports writer. Do you have any seats to complain about?
• The stadium will be half full those tickets were given away.

Do you understand what I'm saying here? This isn't the normal "there's a cloud of negativity around us" thing. It's something from another planet. False assumptions about how NIL funds are distributed leading to a conclusion of "isn't this a failure by the AD and head coach?" on my phone screen... on a day I got in line for a tailgate lot that's 10 times more popular than it was four years ago. And this was as I was attending yet another sellout (albeit one with actual crowd numbers suppressed by rain up until 30 minutes before kick).

Remember the Virginia game in 2022? You certainly remember the 2022 season. We beat Virginia at home to get revenge on our terrible loss in Charlottesville the year before. Care to guess the attendance that day? 8-5 season, Illini football on the rebound, and it was even band day (with, apparently, TEN THOUSAND BAND KIDS getting free tickets). Just go ahead and guess the attendance that day. 2022 season.

While you come up with your guess I want to address the "10,000 band kids getting free tickets" comment.

Seats in the east balcony of Gies Memorial Stadium? 10,000. If the sellout today was due to 10,000 free tickets given to band kids, 1) they would have filled the entire east balcony and 2) they would have covered the entire field at halftime when they played with the Marching Illini. Just think about TEN THOUSAND band kids joining the 375 Marching Illini and how that would have looked.

OK, have your guess? The attendance in Memorial Stadium for the Virginia game four years ago?

33,669.

Yes, really:

So just picture this. I was tailgating for that Virginia game (with, ahem, plenty of space available in Lot 31). I was in the stadium in my Personal Pressbox™️ which is exactly where I was sitting today. You know, I bet I have a photo from that day. Let me flip through my phone.

I do. Took this panoramic photo of the crowd. According to the clock this was 1:03 before halftime:

So now picture my experience today. Since that moment pictured above we've experienced an 8-win season, a 9-win season, and a 10-win season. This was our eighth sellout in the last 2.25 years. The environment inside that stadium is night-and-day different. Last week I got in line here at 6:15 am for a 7:00 am tailgate lot-opening three blocks away. Nothing is in any way the same about the in-person experience compared to a game only four years ago.

And yet my interactions during games with fans have moved into "truly bizarre" territory. There is one experience in person and a COMPLETELY different experience online. I can assure you that it has never been like this. A big mob of people in "let's go get 'em, boys" mode and then a different mob seemingly obsessed with "we chose a scoreboard over winning!" and trying to downplay sellouts. Truly, truly bizarre.

Oh God, I'm 1,700 words in and I haven't talked about the game yet. Well, I guess it's the game with the least to talk about. We beat an FCS team (albeit the #25 FCS team) and there's not much you can learn from that.

But I'll try: