Illinois Football is almost ready for the next step. Is everyone else?

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Illinois Football is almost ready for the next step. Is everyone else?

A health coach can advise you not to worry about what other people think of you. They may say that a person’s self-respect should not be defined by the opinions of others. After all, true confidence comes from within.

And in many cases life may present you, I think we can accept that good advice.

But after the Miami Hurricanes leapfrogged the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the rankings to claim the final spot in the 2025 College Football Playoff…

–without any team playing the game-

I saw that sometimes it does no matter what people think about you. A LOT.

After all, that terrible decision prompted the Irish people to refuse to participate in any bowl game, preferring to throw themselves a pity party.

Meanwhile, Miami took advantage of his luck, earning three more wins, a cool $20 million appearance bonus, and a trip to the National Championship game.

You may use any argument you may wish to make to explain how the committee reached its final decision; there are many good points to be made.

But there is no law, record, or clearly defined statistics that can explain this matter directly. The only thing that is certain is that the committee chose Miami over Notre Dame.

As an Illini fan, this worries me.

Not because I think choosing the Canes over the Irish has anything to do with Illinois football, but rather, I don’t think independent decision making is in favor of the Illini.

And the numbers prove it.

You may recall that the 2025 season ended with a bang when despite a Music City Bowl victory over Tennessee in Nashville, the 9-win Illini were eliminated from the final AP Top 25 poll.

While trying to be aware of my Orange and Blue bias, I discovered that if you look hard at those final rankings…the worst things look for Illinois.

There are several statistical measures one can point to to make this point, but there is one basic metric that makes the negative bias obvious:

ESPN uses a variety of analytical tools to assess the talent and potential of all 136 FBS programs. One of the more reasonable measures is the “Strength of Record” (SOR) of a particular group. This is a ranking system based on actual team performance compared to the difficulty of the games being played. It this is not the case consider past team performance or pre-season rankings such as the Football Power Index (FPI); it simply compares the group’s results to a globally used baseline.

The Big Ten has four teams that finished the 2025 season with 9-4 records. Here’s how their SORs ranked nationally:

Well, here’s where everyone finished in the last AP Poll-

Before you tell me, “It was just a one-time thing, get over it and move on…”

Let’s go back a year.

On New Year’s Day 2025, Illinois beat South Carolina in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl to finish the season 10-3. The Illini’s hitting streak for the 2024 season ranked 11th in the nation. Their final AP Poll ranking? 16.

Back in the last few years, Illinois finished the year ranked by the Associated Press 5+ places worse than its body of work would give it credit for.

It’s tempting to want to brush this off and forget about it, but it has a big immediate impact: For the past three years, the CFP committee rankings have been almost identical to the AP Polls when the first draft is released after Week 10 of the season. Once the conference tournament is over, again, the two rankings tend to be the same. It’s a rare opportunity for the committee to have a team ranked higher than the Associated Press. Therefore, there is little chance that Illinois will be saved from this oversight of the AP by a committee that cannot see what the media cannot.

This is a tough pill to swallow when it looks like the next milestone for the Illini is an appearance in the College Football Playoff. As we’ve seen every year since the playoffs began, every spot a team can move up in the rankings is important. Only one team has ever had more births in the playoffs when ranked outside the AP Top 10: Alabama in 2025.

And do any of us think the Illini will be given the same benefit of the doubt as the Tide?

Not only does Illinois have to deal with its negative bias; it will have to overcome the positive bias of historical officials.

But there may be a solution.

I see the root of Illinois’ negative bias in the media is that they only won about 40% of their games in my lifetime (since 1995). The last time the Illini won 37 games in five years (which they did now under Bret Bielema), was in the early 80s under Mike White, a time and place I’ve only heard stories about. The Illini have been underdogs for a long time; it’s probably hard for the rest of the college football world to believe they could be winners.

But as we’ve recently learned from Curt Cignetti and Deon Sanders, most failures can be covered with eloquence, attitude, and enough wins on the field.

Both Indiana and Colorado saw many losses before their head coaches arrived. At Indiana, there hadn’t been a 9-win season since 1967. As for Colorado, 16 of the past 17 seasons have ended with losing records.

However, the confidence and outpouring of people from both head coaches combined with some successful players on the field was enough to make the media forget that these guys are coaches at schools that shouldn’t be good. Indiana’s AP poll and CFP rankings have consistently matched their record strengths while Cignetti was head coach. Meanwhile, you could argue that Deion Sanders’ charisma alone is likely why Colorado finished the 2024 season ranked 25th in the AP Poll, despite posting a 30th-ranked strength of record.

I don’t think Bret Bielema needs to start telling the world that Illinois football is going to the moon. He doesn’t need a cowboy hat or a new watch on his wrist every week. But if Illinois is going to take the next step, we’re going to need to stack the deck in every way we can.

Thanks to coach Bielema, the Illini have accomplished a lot in the field to shake that person with tattoos of a lost loved one.

I just think we’re going to need to get rid of that idea outside the arena like that.