Exactly. We could beat Illinois and win the Big Ten by multiple games and we’d still hear that we should have played them on February 11, and that the rescheduling helped us and hurt them. I have already heard this from friends of mine who are Illinois fans, and we haven’t even played yet.
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Can confirm that Illini have irrational hatred of Michigan. They still hold a grudge about the '89 flying Illini among other things.
They will rant no matter what at this point even though Michigan would have much preferred the original schedule. Might as well play what we think we can do and ignore them entirely if we raise a banner.
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Hey, that’s scUM to you, buddy.
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I have lived and worked in Illinois for the last 20 years and since I’m in R&D there are always a lot of Illinois grads/fans that I work with since they’re a solid engineering school. They are one of the weirder fan bases to deal with for sure. Given that their football and basketball teams haven’t been very good very often in the last 20 years, they’re usually pretty quiet about their fandom. Until they’re good…then they’re pretty obnoxious. And they consider themselves one of our “rivals” even though they are probably not even in our top-ten rivals when considering both sports. I also think that because they aren’t as consistently passionate about their teams that it invites more “casual (i.e. uneducated)” fans into the fray who are irrational when it comes to things like this.
Just keep winning and beat Illinois and there’s nothing to discuss.
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They also have some weird beef with us in football, or at least used to. Gary Moeller had a bad tenure there and somehow they blamed it on Michigan.
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Well, Moeller’s first game back as an assistant vs. Illinois, Bo ran up the score 70-21 (Ill scored first 21). I was there.
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I’m really hoping Illini fans stay mad through the end of the regular season.
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It’ll be similar to OSU Football situation where B1G will rightly defer to OSU because they actually beat Indiana H2H. That makes the Illini game all the more important for Michigan.
With no title game to worry about, the conference doesn’t necessarily even have to choose. Just say “you can both hang a banner if you want,” move on, and let the fans fight about it for 20 years.
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I hope they play less than 18. What’s the point?
People may not like it but I can see Indiana being squeezed in between the 1st IU game and Iowa. The conference will want every opportunity to have Indiana get games in against very good teams to make their tourney resume look better.
Illinois hates Michigan in football as well. I just think Illinois hates Michigan in general. If their fans still hate Michigan for something that happened over 30 years ago there is no helping them. This isn’t like Boston hating the Yankees this is totally different.
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Some MSU guy on Reddit was going on about how Hoggard “has the tools to be great” and has “shown so many flashes.” I had a thing typed up, drawing from the exact page as your screenshot, but didn’t have the heart. He’s not a plus passer, shooter, or defender. What’s the ceiling with him?
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I’ve heard the “shown flashes” line from several MSU people as well. Not sure what a ‘flash’ is but if he weren’t showing any in 14 mpg that’d be pretty alarming
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omg those conference-only numbers! 
To be fair, all fan bases are kinda obnoxious.
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Someone let me know if this one is as good as the Wisconsin podcast and I’ll put it on my queue
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Didn’t Rutgers make a Final Four at one point??