There's a New TV in Town

Caterpillar on the field, Busey on the chest, Gies on the stadium, and now the biggest TV in the country hanging over the open end. 

"Nobody ever says, 'I wish we would have gotten a smaller TV,'" Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman told The Athletic this summer, in what is an early front-runner for quote of the season.

I am confident I am one of the most frequent drivers across Green Street in Champaign-Urbana. But this summer I found myself driving down Kirby as much as possible instead. I wanted to see the Big TV. I watched it go up day by day. Just yesterday, I saw them putting up the lettering.

I know, I know — plenty of media heads think this has been beaten to death. But I think it matters, for the same reason I think this is one of the most important Illinois football seasons of our lives up to this point. The Big TV matters because it announces that Illinois football has arrived. 

And what a joy it is. As WCIA's Jacob Dickey recently pointed out, you can see it from Gibson City. Move over Harvest Moon Drive-In. There's a new TV in town.

I'm hopeful they put babies and grandmas and ridiculous fans on it and cook up some fun in-game bits. But mostly I just hope we get to see positive highlights on it, instead of fumbles and stumbles and a lip of dip reminiscent of 2012.

I don't write these previews to tell you about football so much as to tell you about the vibes. 

I've become an amateur collector of Illinois football memorabilia — I guess I have been my whole life. I went to an estate sale this past weekend for a lifelong Illini fan, and the lines were ridiculously long, full of people searching for the rare finds of shirts for the 1984 Rose Bowl, 1989 Final Four, 2001 Big Ten Championship, and 2005 Final Four. Those were the highlights of his collection, and I got some nice (old) sweaters and hats from those events. 

But I also found myself gravitating toward the more niche stuff, like this 1980 NIT shirt. I also walked away with a grey long-sleeve shirt from the MicronPC.com Bowl — not a show-stopping shirt, exactly, but a dot-com era time capsule from a pretty good season that was one of the first I watched (though I was only six). 

It got me thinking. What do I want from this year? 

Not that many years ago, I remember debating whether Illinois could end up on the cutting-room floor if the Power 4 went to 48 teams. I don't think we're an Oregon State or a Washington State anymore. I don't think we're a Mississippi State or a Purdue, either. We're a big boy now, and that's thanks to Josh Whitman.

"We just can't allow ourselves to celebrate prematurely," Whitman told The Athletic in the story about the Big TV. "The moment we become even moderately complacent, then we're going to relinquish any ground that we've been able to gain here over the last several years."

I wish that Athletic story about the Big TV was my season preview. It reads like a pronouncement: Illinois football is here. Things have changed. Luke Altmeyer wasn't a flash in the pan. I hope it comes out the way Whitman presented it, and more than ever, I'm confident that it could.

But Illinois football is Illinois football. And I find it a little scary that we're announcing ourselves when we have a brand new quarterback, a brand new defensive scheme, leaning on a front seven, with players who have little track record in Power 4 football (though the secondary looks good), and a basically brand new offensive line. 

Bret Bielema has been open that – despite the incredible amounts of ads that the Big TV will support – we still struggle to afford a defensive line that can keep up with our Big Ten mates, so we're trying something new in the 3-3-5 Montana Grizzlies defense. And I can't help but trust him.

Because Illinois feels like less of an underdog than it used to. Sure, we're probably not hanging with Ohio State and Oregon. But averaging eight wins a year has been my goal for this program for a long time, and over the last four seasons, we've been there. It's been more fun than I could have imagined.

Last year we were riding high in the preseason, dreaming about the playoff and games that actually matter. This year already feels a little more grounded — but instead of sitting at the bottom of the Big Ten with the Purdues, Northwesterns, and Rutgers of the world, we're in the conversation with Iowa and Nebraska – a fever dream just a decade ago. I guess all of this is to say: Illinois football has grown up. Not all the way. But I don't think it stops this year.

And succinctly, just to keep with tradition, the vibe this year is: I don't need a playoff run. I don't need a Big Ten title. I just want a new shirt.