Agree 100%, and I would argue it is about twice as important to beat Kansas. In the Bielema Era, we have actually gone on the road multiple times and upset teams we were not supposed to beat, or AT LEAST were not supposed to beat handily:
2021: W 20-18 at #7 Penn State
--- L vs. Rutgers
2021: W 14-6 at #20 Minnesota
2022: W 34-10 at Wisconsin
2022: W 26-9 at Nebraska
--- L vs. MSU and Purdue
2023: W 27-24 at Maryland
--- L vs. Wisconsin
2023: W 27-26 at Minnesota
However, when we juice up fan enthusiasm a bit and come back to Champaign, we have often face planted.
- Beat #7 PSU on the road in 2021 in a thrilling 9-OT win?? Return home and lose to Rutgers in front of your own fans.
- Demolish Nebraska in Lincoln in 2022 to move to an unprecedented 7-1 record and top 20 ranking?? Come back to Champaign and lose to an awful MSU team in front of over 56,000 fans.
- Get a breakthrough upset win last year in College Park to rekindle hopes of a truly successful season?? Come home and blow a 2-touchdown lead to Wisconsin on Homecoming in front of another big crowd of over 54,000.
Frankly, I think we need to give the home fans evidence right in front of their eyes that we could be decent this year, and we need to send a message that Memorial Stadium can actually provide us any type of serious advantage. FWIW, I would consider the following to have been "huge" home games for us in the Bielema Era for one reason or another, as it relates to rebuilding this program ... and it's been a mixed bag to put it kindly:
2021 vs. Nebraska in Week Zero - W 30-22. This was obviously Bret's first game, and it was the first college football game with fans in like two years. Over 4 million tuned in, and we sent a message with this victory. Amazing start!
2022 vs. Minnesota: W 26-14. While it's easy to forget now, people were HYPING this Minnesota team, and we had our first top 25 ranking in quite some time. To get that win on Homecoming was huge. Again, off to a nice start!
2022 vs. Michigan State: L 23-15. In front of our biggest crowd in years and with the chance to clinch the Big Ten West, we faceplanted.
2022 vs. Purdue: L 31-24. A second chance from the football gods to clinch our division in a game that was picked up on national television, rather than the BTN. Yes, the refs were abysmal, but we did not help ourselves, either. An incredibly decent crowd (for 20-degree weather) of nearly 46,000 turned out to watch our Big Ten Championship Game hopes die a slow, painful death ... and I was one of 'em.
2023 vs. #7 Penn State: L 30-13. Big Noon Kickoff on FOX and a chance to send a loud and clear message that 2022 wasn't a fluke if we could have at least played them really tough. A crowd of over 49k clad in orange (again, I was there!) and a national audience of well over 3 million viewers watched a close game at halftime turn into a blowout as we played some of the sloppiest football we played all season.
2023 vs. Wisconsin: L 25-21. A chance to beat Wisconsin two years in a row for the first time in God-knows-how-long and assert ourselves as true players in this conference a week after we upset Maryland in College Park. Win this one, and we are 4-4 and in the driver's seat to rectify last year's heart ache and make the Big Ten Championship Game ... ugh.
2023 vs. Northwestern: L 45-43. Through a season of ups and downs and a week after losing a heartbreaker on the road vs. #16 Iowa, we AT LEAST just had to beat a Northwestern program embroiled in scandal on our home field to make a bowl for consecutive seasons for the first time in over a decade ... and we blew it.
TL;DR
Winning in Lincoln vs. what is supposed to be a good Nebraska team would indeed be a big-time win. However, if we lose to KU and another road shocker gets our record back up to 3-1, I am not sure it will feel as much like "progress" to me than if we are able to start off 3-0 by defeating a ranked opponent under the lights in front of our home fans, even if we drop a hard-fought game at Nebraska the next week. JMO, but if we are going to take any real steps forward as a program, playing in Champaign simply HAS to mean something for us again.
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