But good news is on the horizon for the Illini football team - the Big Ten announced its realignment plans for football once Nebraska joins the conference in 2011. The Illini's division will include Ohio State, Indiana, Purdue, Wisconsin, and Penn State. This is good news for our yet-to-be-named coach next year - with fellow doormats Indiana and Purdue, around, there might be a couple of easy wins to be had every year. And if our knucklehead AD could figure out that we are trying to rebuild our program and not worry about strength of schedule as if we were competing for a national championship, I can see a scenario where Illinois at least starts becoming bowl-eligible on a regular basis - a marked improvement over the last 15 years of Illini football.
There's more good news out of the realignment announcement - the new divisions won't affect the basketball team. That's good, because having Ohio State, Purdue, and Wisconsin in a basketball division would make things awfully tough on the Illini every year, while Michigan State would have a cakewalk every year with Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, and Northwestern in their division. But since there is a conference tournament, there will be no divisional alignments in basketball, so after the Illini get back to where they should be this year, they shouldn't have any trouble sustaining it.
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