Again, the numbers say it’s approximately 50/50 regardless of how big of a favorite M would have been. You can’t keep making this “M would have gone 3-0 anyways” argument. It’s nonsense.
Who won DPoy?
Darryl Morsell
That makes no sense. Why would we not take into account the result of a game that actually happened? It’s not a hypothetical anymore.
Wasn’t it more likely that UM would sweep MSU than it was they would go 3-0 against the three they missed?
Bottom line is they had two chances to make this a non-conversation and laid two eggs. Doesn’t mean Michigan isn’t champs, but Illinois has every right to be pissed and claim they are co-champs IMO. I’d certainly be arguing Michigan hang a banner if the situation was reversed
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I just can’t get there. This is a team whose losses are home against Maryland, OSU, @ MSU, @ Rutgers. They nearly lost to NW at home and escaped @ Nebraska in OT. Consistency has not been their thing. If it was we wouldn’t be having this debate.
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We have terrible fans, just like every fan base. We have more total fans, which means that there are a lot of very vocal idiots in our fan base- none of them on this site though, which is why I’m happy to pay money for passionate, but reasoned takes along with great analysis.
Both teams are good, Illinois played better down the stretch, but on the season, the Big Ten determined that Michigan is the champion. That’s reality, fair or not.
If the roles were reversed, you can also bet that Illinois fans would not have this internal struggle about whether their Big Ten Champion team was truly “worthy”. Michigan fans, as a whole, are self-deprecating. This team is really good, and I think a lot of people are ignoring that fact now because of two games.
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The team definitely doesn’t care if this is a controversy or not. They also probably don’t care what Illinois thinks. They won the big ten and they are hanging the banner. It’s sports talk show stuff to argue about controversy, not the teams.
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We have plenty of people on this site insisting it would not be the same if reversed. Dylan is completely right that it would be worse if reversed.
Michigan and MSU played a game after Michigan literally cut down the nets to celebrate winning the conference 3 days prior. To assume Michigan still plays the same game against MSU Sunday knowing they need that game to win the conference is pretty shortsighted.
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Man oh man, I’d be equal parts petrified and equal parts thrilled to see a Michigan/Illinois BTT final.
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Uh, Michigan would have cut down the nets and celebrated even if they clinched a co-championship
The team definitely didn’t care about the controversy or what Illinois thinks in the Illinois game. Illinois definitely did.
They would have, but that’s completely irrelevant to the conversation. There is no scenario in which they could have clinched a co-championship against MSU on 3/4 (if hypothetically regular standings determined conference champion.) That was Michigan’s 14th win, and Illinois already had 15 at that point.
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They certainly created a motivational tool for that game that we didn’t have. They beat us fair and square. It also didn’t change who won the championship ultimately. I’m not sure what your point is.
I mean it’s a weird situation with the unequal number of games. My suggestion that I posed last week for how the Big Ten should have handled it was:
- Winning % determines conference champion
- If top two teams are within x% of each other and played an unequal number of games, they are regular season co-champs
If that was the case then M would have theoretically clinched a share of the title in the first MSU game. But I do agree with your point that the result of Sunday may have been different without a clinched title. I don’t see any way the Big Ten could determine the champ that wouldn’t have resulted in a clinch though. Total number of wins was never going to be part of the conversation.
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Honestly, the takes on this thread today have been pretty reasonable. I count one person who says that the over reaction is a bit much, but he understands people being upset or annoyed, just not irate or thinking conspiracy. I’m getting a lot of noise from the reasonable Illinois fans I know, so I agree some of them are over the top.
There would be plenty of Michigan fans who would be irate and screaming if the roles were reversed- just like there are after every Michigan loss. I’m not debating that. Whether those people are right to do so is the more meaningful question. You have the right to howl at the moon, but whether that’s the right thing to do is up for others to judge.
Illinois has plenty to gripe about, legitimately or not, and we’d feel the same.
I highly doubt our coach would be making the “We have the most wins” argument though lol
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Some of the blame belongs to the B1G for not having Michigan play a conference game or 2 when they had 2 weeks off before they played on Christmas Day. The reason Illinois is beefing is because they had to reconfigure their schedule to fit in the 20 games. They ended the season playing 5 of 6 on the road which isn’t easy and still finished 16-4 in the conference.
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I think this should be Illinois’s biggest beef with the Big Ten. That part of the schedule was baffling. No reason Michigan should have been off for that long when you knew postponed games were going to be a reality during the Big Ten season. Would have been a lot more reasonable to fit in postponed games at the end of the season and finish all of the games if a couple of them were squeezed into that part of the schedule. You can’t be mad at Michigan not bending over backwards to play 11 games in 21 days at the end of the season.
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