Are Underwood and Bielema the same? Yes, and no.

Happy Sunday, Illinois Land!

My mind is playing tricks on me. My emotional capital must find a way to expand itself.

It feels like I am living in the bizarro world these days.

I am incapable of having to deal with every single game being an individual heart attack watch from September, all the way through (early) March. See what I did there?

Illinois men’s basketball and football each have dynamic leaders, in the primes of their careers. Other Big Ten institutions, as well as Power Five programs scattered throughout the country, would take either to lead their programs in a heartbeat.

It’s bewildering and perplexing how far both of these programs have come the last handful of years. You often hear coaches waxing on about how “we didn’t come to this to only to get this far.”

That mindset remains the correct one to employ. At what point does it turn into a rhetorical question, with no answer satisfiable?

Brad Underwood (year 7) has obviously been at Illinois longer than…