Every Illinois Football coaching tenure seems to be the same

A while back I made a formula to calculate how good each Illini football season was based on wins/bowls/rivalry wins, etc., and looking back, I noticed a strong trend.

Almost every single head coach follows a similar trajectory in terms of wins in their career that I would like to call the “Pyramid Effect.” After putting the wins per season of every coach throughout their career into a graph, a very similar shape occurred in almost every instance. A climb up to a somewhat to very successful season, and a harsh and sharp downfall once again to the basement, a pyramid.

A concerning trend

Mike White is where we’ll start, because he is both the earliest and best example of the pyramid. He took a miserable team to three wins, turned it around, and even hit the illustrious 10-win mark for one of only three instances in Illini history. From that 10-win season, the steady decline starts. Seven wins, six wins,…