Burnt.
Have your second arrange a meeting at dawn. You get to choose weapons.
It does seem like the U of I pisses away a lot of money on their athletics department. When I was a vet student there earlier this decade, they had some bullshit “athletics fee” (I think it was around 35 or 40 dollars) that we had to pay each semester with our tuition bill. The student tickets to games were also pretty expensive. When I attended the University of Florida as an undergrad, there was no such fee, and students got in free into any sport except football, where a student ticket was only $6 or 8. On top of that, the Gators actually win championships.
Probably too late, as this thread has run out of what little steam it ever had - but one hard-to-quantify aspect I was incorporating into my initial assessment was that UofI seems to frequently make it to the tournaments and bowl games, only to find a way to lose when it really counts. In that respect, I distinguish them in my mind from teams who never even make it to the post-season. The difference between getting your hopes up and then dashed, as opposed to never really having any hopes at all.
In that case, the Missouri Tigers are about as bad as U of I
And it is not like Western Kentucky is some horrible podunk basketball team. They have a proud. long and tradition-rich program.
also
Illinois is 13th on that list…look who is right behind them. Should Illinois be better, probably but getting beat by Western is not the end of the world
I think they feel about like Wake Forest right now. Cleveland St.? How do you lose to Cleveland St.? When did Cleveland become a state?