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MADISON, WISCONSIN - NOVEMBER 22: Head coach Bret Bielema of the Illinois Fighting Illini looks on before their game against the Wisconsin Badgers at Camp Randall Stadium on November 22, 2025 in Madison, Wisconsin.
(Photo by Jordan Bank/Getty Images) | Getty Images A good life coach would advise you to worry less about what other people think of you.
They might say a persons self-worth should not be defined by the opinions of others.
After all, true confidence comes from within.
And in most scenarios life might present you, I think we could agree thats good counsel.
But after the Miami Hurricanes leapfrogged the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the rankings to take the final spot in the 2025 College Football Playoff..
without either team playing a game- I realized that sometimes it does matter what people think of you.
A LOT.
After all, that fateful decision prompted the Irish to refuse participation in any bowl game, opting to throw a pity party for themselves instead.
Meanwhile, Miami took advantage of their good fortune, racking up three more wins, a cool $20 million in appearance compensation, and a trip to the National Championship game.
You can use whatever logistical argument you might want to make to explain how the committee came to their final decision; there are plenty of good points to be made.
But there is no clearly defined rule, record, or statistic that can explain the matter definitively.
The only thing that is for certain is the committee chose Miami over Notre Dame.
As an Illini fan, this worries me.
Not because I think that a preference of the Canes over the Irish has anything to do with Illinois football, but rather, I dont think subjective decision making favors the Illini.
And the numbers bear that out.
You may recall the 2025 season ended with something of a slap in the face when despite a Music City Bowl win over Tennessee in Nashville, the 9-win Illini were omitted from the final AP Top 25 poll.
While I try to be cognizant of my Orange and Blue bias, I have discovered that the harder you look at those final rankings...the worse things look for Illinois.
There are a number of statistical measures one could point to in order to articulate this point, but theres a basic metric that makes the negative bias obvious: ESPN uses various analytical tools to assess the talent and potential of all 136 FBS programs.
One of the more objective measures is a given teams Strength of Record (SOR).
This is a ranking system based on a teams actual performance compared to the difficulty of the games played.
It does not consider a teams past performance nor pre-season rankings like the Football Power Index (FPI); it simply compares a teams results against a universally applied baseline.
The Big Ten had four teams finish the 2025 season with 9-4 records.
Heres how their respective SORs ranked nationally: 16.
Iowa 18.
Illinois 19.
Michigan 20.
USC Yet, heres where everyone finished in the final AP Poll- 17.
Iowa 20.
USC 21.
Michigan ....
Unranked: Illinois Before you tell me, It was just a one time thing, get over it and move on..
Lets go back a year.
On New Years Day in 2025, Illinois beat South Carolina in the Cheez-It Citrus bowl to finish the season 10-3.
The Illinis season strength of record for the 2024 season was ranked 11th in the country.
Their final AP Poll ranking? 16th.
In back to back years, Illinois has finished the year ranked by the Associated Press 5+ spots worse than its body of work would indicate it deserves.
Its tempting to want to brush this off and forget about it, but theres a larger implication at hand: Over the past three years, the CFP committee rankings have nearly mirrored the AP Polls when the first edition has been released after Week 10 of the season.
When the conference championships are completed, again, the two rankings are often quite similar.
It is a rare occasion for the committee to have a team ranked considerably higher than the Associated Press.
Thus, its highly unlikely for Illinois to be saved from this AP oversight by a committee who can see what the media cannot.
This is a tough pill to swallow when it would seem that the next milestone for the Illini is an appearance in the College Football Playoff.
As we have seen every year since the playoff system began, every single position a team can move up in the rankings is critical.
Only one team has ever received an at large birth in the playoffs when ranked outside the AP Top 10: Alabama in 2025.
And do any of us really think that the Illini are going to be offered the same benefit of the doubt as the Tide? Not only does Illinois have to contend with its own negative bias; it will have to overcome the positive bias of historical powerhouses as well.
But there might be a solution.
I perceive the root cause of Illinois negative media bias is the fact that theyve only won about 40% of their games in the time Ive been alive (since 1995).
The last time the Illini won 37 games in five years (which they have now done under Bret Bielema), was in the early 80s under Mike White, a time and place Ive only heard stories about.
The Illini have been losers for a long time; its probably hard for the rest of the college football world to believe they might actually be winners.
But as weve recently learned from Curt Cignetti and Deon Sanders, a lot of failure can be covered up by flair, attitude, and enough wins on the field.
Both Indiana and Colorado had seen a LOT of losing before their current head coaches arrived.
For Indiana, there hadnt been a 9-win season since 1967.
As for Colorado, 16 of the prior 17 seasons had finished with losing records.
And yet the confident and outgoing personas of both head coaches combined with some on field success was enough to make the media forget that these guys were coaches at schools that werent supposed to be good.
Indianas AP polling and CFP rankings have stayed right in line with their strength of record while Cignetti has been the head coach.
Meanwhile, you could argue that Deion Sanders charisma alone may be why Colorado finished the 2024 season ranked 25th in the AP Poll, despite only touting a strength of record ranked 30th.
I dont think Bret Bielema needs to start telling the world that Illinois football is going to the moon.
He doesnt need a cowboy hat or a new watch on his wrist every week.
But if Illinois is going to take the next step, we will need to stack the deck in every way that we can.
Thanks to Coach Bielema, the Illini have done a lot on the field to shake off that tattooed persona of a lovable loser.
I just think were going to need to get rid of that perception off the field as well.