In the past five years, the debate over whether or not Illini fans call Champaign a football or basketball town has been pretty fruitless. The football team hasn’t had success (minus a 2002 Sugar Bowl following the ‘01 season and ‘99 Micronpc.com Bowl) in almost a decade. The basketball program, on the other hand, has come within points of a national title, is a perennial Big Ten contender, has accumulated more trophies than it knows what to do with and has built one of the fiercest and most intimidating home courts in the Midwest.

So why bring up the question now, following football’s second straight two-win season and another 20-plus win season (and another tourney appearance) for basketball?

In the past week, Illinois football has sold out another area of the stadium. The horseshoe extensions have followed the horseshoe (south endzone) and Block I in finding season ticket buyers to capacity. The new student section is almost filled up, too. Undoubtedly, this surge in ticket sales comes after the signing of a very impressive recruiting class and the promising program head coach Ron Zook is building.

Still, Memorial Stadium has only seen a handful of Big Ten wins in past years and hasn’t produced a winning home environment since 2001. And despite the hype surrounding the upcoming season, it still seems like a lot tickets being sold for a team that rivals only Indiana for patheticness in the conference (and Indiana beat Illinois the past two years).

Not to take any credit away from the marketing job that the athletic office has done to push ticket sales or the renovation project, but I think the recent splurge in Memorial Stadium interest is because Illinois, at heart, will always be a football school.

The Midwest is known for creating kings on the gridiron. The Big Ten conference breeds big boys who like to hit and pound the football, an appealing brand of football for an area overwhelmed with blue-collar workers. Defense and power running are staples, and the Rose Bowl, the postseason spectacle the conferece sends its best to every year, is the most historic and notable bowl in college football. It’d be difficult for any school in the Big Ten to call itself a basketball school over football (outside of Indiana, but it took Hoosiers and Bobby Knight to change that).

Not to mention it’s every Illinois Pop Warner pipsqueeks dream to one day play in a high school state championship on the terf at Memorial Stadium. Every year, the University plays host to eight (a number that has grown from five in recent years) championships for the various classes of Illinois high school football. So even the prep school kids and suburbanites are drawn to Illinois football in a magical way.

Still, basketball got plenty of converts in the last few decades after years of dismal football teams and mediocre bowl appearances. The lore of the hardwood game was tough to deny when Illinois put Final Four caliber teams on the court, hung banners from the raptors and packed Assembly Hall every game. Paint the Hall Orange, back-to-back (-to-back-to-back-etc.) winning season and superstars like Kendall Gill, Frank Williams and Deron and Dee allowed Illini sports fans something to fill the gaping hole left by football’s inadequacy.
But now, with the hopes of a winning team and bowl appearance whispering accross Illini nation (along with an overexagerated decline in basketball), and football is back as front runner. And while it’d be nice to become a Wisconsin-like school where football, though king, is closely followed by basketball (and hockey for that matter), right now it looks like one can only be up while the other is down.

And that one is football.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Illini Basketball, College Basketball, College Football, Illini Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.