The Sporting Goods | The failures of the Fighting Illini
In South Bend, Domers are talking about a national title. In Evanston, Northwestern’s Wildcats are looking like a legitimate Big Ten team. And in DeKalb, the arrow is pointing straight up for Northern Illinois—again. It’s great to be a college football fan in Illinois. Unless you’re a fan of Illinois.
The mood in Champaign is blue with almost no orange shining through. Having been outscored 194–60 in their first five Big Ten games this season, life is rough for the 2–6 Fighting Illini and their embattled first-year coach Tim Beckman. The success of ND, NU and NIU is only making things worse—possibly for years to come.
For more of this story and other Chicago sports essays, visit chicagosidesports.com.
Share with your network
Comment
It's okay to be a show-off.
With social reading, seamlessly share your favorite TOC articles, reviews and more with your Facebook friends, and check out what they're reading as well.
Share what you want, when you want: Once you've enabled social reading, easily enable/disable sharing anytime.
See what others are reading: With our new social activity feed, don't miss out on what your friends (and others) are reading.