Sign up for our daily Illini football newsletter here
Greetings from “Can’t Wait For Saturday,” your morning morsel of college football, courtesy of longtime Illini beat writer, AP Top 25 voter and Heisman state rep Bob Asmussen. He’ll give you his views each day on the game he loves.
***
Chris Low at ESPN.com ranked all the schedules for the Power Four. A worthy endeavor that is a fun read.
He broke the teams down by categories hardest to easiest with different subsets. It’s informative for any college football fan.
For the purposes of this story, I wanted to see if Illinois made the cut and if so in what category.
Sure enough Bret Bielema’s team is listed … for “Easiest close to the season.”
Low makes some good points.
“The (Illinois) schedule is front loaded as they play four of their final six games at home and three of the last four are home games against Rutgers, Maryland and Northwestern. The only road game in that stretch is at Wisconsin.”
And it is more than the quantity, it’s the quality of the late-season opponents.
“Illinois won’t face a preseason Top 25 opponent the last five weeks of the season.”
Important to point out that Illinois had nothing to do with the conference part of the schedule. That was set up by the Big Ten. Over time, my theory is that stuff tends to even out.
Bob Asmussen is a college football reporter and columnist for The News-Gazette. He can be reached at 217-393-8248 or asmussen@news-gazette.com.
