today is the first day of the year and the rose bowl is upon us! it’s been a long time since illinois made it out to pasadena for their appearance in the granddaddy of them all… but today they are there and i can’t wait to see them play against USC. everyone (including the vegas odds-makers) are completely writing illinois off as a fluke, completely undeserving of this bowl bid. but lest they forget, this is the same illinois team that went into ohio state (one of the teams in the national championship game) and beat them rather easily. USC is a great team, arguably better than ohio state, but the orange and blue could stun the nation today… that’s what i’m looking forward to watching!
3:30 central time can’t come soon enough!
(p.s. ~ there nothing like watching lou holz give his locker room speech on college gameday and having it addressed to the illini… never thought i’d see that day!)
four… four massive turnovers that were extremely costly and should have ended in scores of some sort. one… a 29 yard missed field goal in the first half. and a game plan that didn’t do much until the third quarter—that is before the slew of turnovers changed the game. the game was close for about 3 seconds… and illinois had a chance in the third quarter… but they blew it. i should’ve known it would happen, and a part of me deep down inside knew it was going to happen i just didn’t want to listen.
one thing is for certain, usc is a lot better looking that ohio state. usc deserves to be in the national championship game, but until there’s a playoff system in college football (which still blows my mind that it hasn’t happened yet) a team not only has to be nearly undefeated, they also have to lose that game or two early in the year and hope that they stay healthy. this isn’t how you determine a national champion. there’s too much luck involved and good fortune needed for something like that to take place. whoever wins the national championship this year will be just as disputed as all the past 4. this has got to change… but i’m sure it’ll be another decade or so before they realize that it is possible to have a playoff system with the bowl games included during the month and a half break that they currently take between thanksgiving and new years.
one last observation… i didn’t realize pete carroll was such a saint. abc certainly has a major crush on him. i was getting kind of tired of listening about how wonderful he is.
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Did you honestly expect a severely young and out-talented IL team to compete in this game? Trust me, I am a huge Illini fan and cant wait to see this next recruiting class Zook brings in. After Turner absolutely ruined the program its a wonder Zook has turned it around this fast.
And I couldnt agree more about Ohio State. I hope LSU absolutely mud holes them. Like 52-3 would be nice. How in the hell do you play the schedule they did and get into this game??? Might as well put Hawaii in the game. OSU is a joke.
Give IL 2 years and they will be nat’l contenders.
i expected them to compete… and they were pretty close to cutting the game to 21-17 before the ball was ripped out of the receivers hands at the goal-line in the 3rd quarter. that was the play that changed the game.
if they had scored the touchdown it would’ve been a completely different game. the illini had opportunities that they completely let slip through their fingers. i expected them to compete, not win.