OT: Illinois AD writes open letter about B1G Champions situation
Illinois' athletic director just wrote an open letter about how they feel like they should be at least be B1G Co-Champs. Pretty convincing or funny or embarrassing from whatever angle you choose to look at it.
Well he has a point. Michigan opened the door wide open for this.
And so did illinois.
dont lose 4 games!
Ah..we lost 3 in 4 less games. Sloppy finish hurts our credibility.
Maybe we come out with more fire on Sunday if anything were actually on the line. Illinois proceeded to play like garbage for a few games and it bit them in the ass. They need to shut the fuck up and play for the 1seed and compete for a National Championship like they're legitimately capable of accomplishing.
What are you talking about - what does credibility have to do with anything? We won the big ten, full stop. There is no debate or argument - the powers that be decided win percentage would determine the championship and we had the best win percentage.
This isn’t a beauty contest and no subjective judgments were involved, so credibility doesn’t even enter into it. We won the conference by the exact standards that everyone (including Illinois) agreed to 5 months ago.
Amen. What the hell is everyone on actually even having the discussion. The title was won when we beat MSU in Ann Arbor. The rules were set and accepted before the season, there is no discussion to be had. This is no different then UCF claiming a national title a couple years ago..it's obnoxious and has no merit.
Maybe the Illinois AD thinks they have the same leverage as Ohio State does. Football set the precedent that preseason rules can be changed.
Illinois should just go ahead and make their own trophy, fly it down to Orlando and take a photo of it next to UCF's national championship banner.
March 10th, 2021 at 12:02 PM ^
And let’s not forget how many people on this blog were advocating for OSU.
The Illinois AD has a point, but he picked the wrong time to make it. The rules were very clear on how they would determine the BIG champ. If he was in disagreement, he should have argued then, not now. Everyone played their season according to the rules set at the start of the season. All he looks like now is a sore loser.
Not to mention that we were a wire-to-wire champion. We were in first place from Game 1 to the finish. Of our three losses, one occurred after we had already clinched the title outright.
March 10th, 2021 at 12:37 PM ^
"We won the big ten, full stop."
Agreed.
At least we can we can say that we're good enough to beat Maryland and Rutgers.. something Illinois can't say.
*fewer
Hallelujah. Amen.
fewer. Not less
Illinois lost 1 of every 5 games. Michigan lost 1 of every 5.7 games.
Sloppy finish sucks but math is clear.
When it comes to conference titles, games at the end of the season have just as much weight as games at the start. That's the beauty of the regular season title is that all the games matter.
Big Ten tournament title is there for teams on a hot streak at the END of the season. It's a pretty nice system if you think about it.
Seriously, the chance of Michigan winning all 3 of those games was probably sub 70%, they have a completely legitimate gripe
They actually don't. At all. You can't cite a loss incurred AFTER clinching a conference title as evidence that the title was illegitimate. That's the dumbest fucking taint-sniffing bullshit ass argument I've ever heard. This Whitman lady can eat a fat one.
Michigan won by the rules everyone agreed to. End of story.
This Whitman lady can eat a fat one.
1. Josh is a lady? I wonder if Hope knows the father of her children is actually her wife?!
2. Also hilarious that you got 43 upvotes and just last week the forum was bitching about how women profs get called "woman" or "lady" as a pejorative or to discount their standing among their male peers.
The hypocrisy of this forum's SJWs is delicious.
March 10th, 2021 at 11:22 AM ^
You are just the world’s most special snowflake , aren’t ya?
So name calling instead of addressing the forum's hypocrisy on using female cues as insults is your takeaway.
LOL.
Troll on assclown.
Aw, how adorable . . . You can rant about social justice warriors and other people’s hypocrisy and when you get called a snowflake you absolutely go to pieces. Toughen up and stop being such a sally
So because UM would possibly lose 1 of 3 games 3 out of 10 times, we're supposed to assume the worst?
No, Michigan won the championship and that is what the record books say. From a technical standpoint that is the only answer. The AD doing this is a bad look.
im just saying from a fan and reality perspective I absolutely get it. Michigan fans just saying they would have won all three games isn’t a compelling argument.
We would have had to win 3 of 4 after we clinched. I hardly watched the 2nd MSU game, I suspect the motivation would have been different.
Doesn't matter, this'll all be forgotten in a few days.
Uh, do you see our season record? Do you see what we did to better teams, especially during that period of time? Your numbers are straight out of your ass, which is only impressive because your head was already lodged there.
im just saying from a fan and reality perspective I absolutely get it. Michigan fans just saying they would have won all three games isn’t a compelling argument.
Neither is saying "the chances of Michigan winning all three games is sub 70%". How did you even come up with that value? The most likely outcomes were: Michigan winning 2 and losing 1 or Michigan winning all 3. I don't see how you can accurately quantify the "chances" of either of these scenarios.
These are hypotheticals. They have no basis in reality. They are merely "I feel" statements. I feel like Michigan would have won all three. You feel like they would not have.
The fact is that assuming the outcomes of games that haven't been played, is not a compelling argument for either side here.
I mean, it's no more compelling an argument than Illinois fans claiming they should be co-champions because they won more games than UM while ignoring that they lost more games as well. Again, assuming UM wouldn't win those games isn't any more based in sound logic than assuming they would.
March 10th, 2021 at 12:38 PM ^
"...they have a completely legitimate gripe..."
The equation is simple and Illinois was still 2nd on two fronts (% and total losses).
Shitting the bed against Rutgers could be a disqualifier by itself. Full stop.
And we lost to Minnesota which is worse than Rutgers.
Putting this near the top so the maize and blue goggle wearing lemmings can down vote another person for the sole offense of offering an opinion that doesn't jive with the hive.
Illinois' gripe is not unfounded.
The same people negging these opinions would be losing their shit if the situation was reversed. 100%.
I know I wouldn't. Again, the B1G decided before the season, and all the teams agreed before the season, that the standard for winning the conference was the team(s) that had the highest winning percentage. That's the end of the gripe. Should there have been a contingency set out before the season if one team finished with a higher winning percentage while another team won more games (traditional standard)? Yeah, probably. But sadly there wasn't. Illinois agreed to these standards, just like everyone else. Complaining about not winning, when you came in second by the standard set for everyone at the start of the competition is just retrospective sour grapes.
Honest question, but do we know that for a fact? I feel like we kept hearing throughout the season that it would "likely be winning percentage" but was that decision made prior to competition?
Yes, we know it for a fact.
The Illinois AD even says as much in his open letter, stating "In November, the conference agreed that winning percentage would be used to determine the regular-season champion in basketball. At the time, we stared into an uncertain future, not knowing how many games teams would be able to play. The winning percentage metric was meant to "level the playing field" for those teams that might suffer more significant disruption than others." (paragraph 9)
Additionally, how would it make sense for teams to start playing a season without knowing the rules for how to win their conference? That's just illogical.
You are right though that, throughout the season, it had not been officially confirmed. The reason for this was that the conference was doing its best to get every team to play all 20 games. But, once the Michigan pause happened, they had to officially confirm that the title would be determined by winning percentage. AP News source.
Yeah, agreed with you. In November, the conference agreed that winning percentage would be used to determine the regular-season champion in basketball. End of story.
March 10th, 2021 at 10:40 AM ^
Additionally, how would it make sense for teams to start playing a season without knowing the rules for how to win their conference? That's just illogical.
I asked because that's essentially what happened in football. We started the season with one set of rules and ended with a different set. Thanks for the information, I had missed that bit from the Illinois AD.
March 10th, 2021 at 12:22 PM ^
Except the rule change in football had nothing to do with who won the B1G East division. The division winners were to be decided by winning percentage and the teams with the highest winning percentage in the East and West divisions won their respective division titles.
The only thing that was changed was an arbitrary minimum game rule for participation in the conference championship game; this rule had no bearing on who could actually be the division winner. The rules for who was to be division champions was never changed. OSU was allowed to play in the conference championship game because they were the East division winner by the standard set at the start of the season. If Indiana had ended the season with a better winning percentage, then they would have been the East division winners and would have advanced to the conference title game.
The rules were changed from beginning of the season to the end, that's all I was saying. Wasn't sure if they had established clear rules in the beginning of bball season or not because I hadn't yet heard that they had.
Why are you here?
Whenever I hear that question, I think of the drunk called Otis from Highs Plains Drifter by the Beastie Boys so the appropriate answer is:
I’m charming, I’m dashing, I’m rental car bashing
I’m phony paper passing at Nick’s Check Cashing
No, because they agreed upon a method for the regular season champion long ago, prior to the season. They have hurt feelings. Yeah, they best UM, but that wasn’t the first qualifier for determining champion.
Would you call the tourney champ a team who lost their last game after beating, say Gonzaga? No, because the tourney rules are the tourney rules. One cannot say, well, they have a gripe for being crowned champion because they did win that one game against the judged best team—obviously they’re better than Gonzaga because they beat them and everyone else as a result. No, because there are rules made to determine the champion.
Boo hoo, Illinois..
No, Illinois has no argument. They were never ahead of us in win percentage all season. In fact, by playing more games than us, they got more chances to raise their winning percentage. We probably would have swept IU/NW/PSU if given the chance, and then our winning percentage would have been .850.
The fact that we lost a meaningless game to end the season - after we had clinched - doesn't mean that they deserved the title. Even with that loss, we still were ahead of them in win percentage. It's their fault for losing four games.
What’s it like being wrong all the time? They unanimously voted to use winning percentage in November, and then unanimously confirmed that decision less than 2 weeks ago. He had two chances to complain and argue for a different approach, but he didn’t - not until he realized they didn’t win under the twice agreed-upon criteria.
I know they don't see championships very often in Cham-bana, but It's sad as hell that Ill has their AD begging for a title. Fucking pathetic, in fact.
Maybe the real champions are the friends we made along the way.
Michigan Men's Basketball official Twitter account trolling Illinois:
https://twitter.com/umichbball/status/1369436590146215943
I'm not sure this is really trolling Illinois (although I'm sure they'll interpret it that way).
If you get a trophy, you're sure going to celebrate it.
March 10th, 2021 at 12:53 PM ^
I think it is even more impressive the AD almost completely dismisses the fact that in 2004-2005 Illinois went 37 - 2 (15-1 conference) and finished national runner up.
How exactly is a 20-6 (16-4 conference) squad even being compared to that unless they win it all which only time will tell?
You know that he'd be arguing just the opposite if the shoe were on the other foot. If you want to be the champ, don't lose!