on February 10, 2026, 22:48:10, in reply to "The best version of our fan base that we’ll see all year will be the traveling fans in LA"
And I’ll be curious what Sunday is like—the C-U fan base always gets up for IU 
Previous Message
Kind of like those basketball games in Vegas a few years ago or the football game at Duke, that’s when I’m like “hell yeah I love being part of this fanbase.”
The Chicago crowd this year was also one of the most engaged Illini crowds I’ve been involved with in many years. But there’s a cloud hanging over these Champaign crowds for some reason, and the criticism of the students has now become 100% valid as well. That was embarrassing tonight. Previous Message
I didn’t think we’d seen it infect basketball to this degree before, but man it seems really bad right now Previous Message
That’s the weird part of where we seem to be at now. We’re not even getting the positive byproduct of that craziness, we’re just a bunch of miserable fucks who are waiting for a reason to complain.
I will say that being 0-2 in home games against Big Ten teams with a pulse this season doesn’t help with any of this though. Previous Message
and we’re WAY more sane than, say, Kentucky’s or IU’s to name 2
Every school’s online base is nuts Previous Message
I know roughy has written about this but there's a lot of Chicago area pro-sports types that are mad/frustrated because they also follow pro teams that mostly disappoint. And I think we also have a lot of townies that might love the teams but maybe not the UI as a whole? Other stuff going on like the older pro-Chief types, etc.
And of course we're all so "thirsty" because we've come close to the pinnacle at times only to tumble back down soon after.
And the irony of course is we're probably in the best position we've ever been in but it's hard to overcome all that.
87
Message Thread