COLUMN: If Whitman Wants Illini Recognized as League Champions Bad Enough, He’ll Do It Himself

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- "If you want something done, do it yourself."

This is a quote commonly attributed to the former French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte from the early 1800s.

Illinois athletics director Josh Whitman wants the men’s basketball program he represents and advocates for to be honored as a league co-champion. Whitman is clearly angry that the Big Ten Conference officials and his 13 athletics directors colleagues don’t see the world the way he does. Hence, the letter he published on the school’s athletics website.

In the letter, Whitman writes his solution was simply to “declare Michigan and Illinois co-champions of the regular season. It was a straightforward solution to a complicated problem.”

So, let’s get this whole thing understood clearly.

Whitman makes it very clear in the letter that “we have not endeavored to take anything away from Michigan” but this avocation is purely in the effort to also recognize Illinois’ accomplishment in a truly nonsensical season of competition.

A fair position that does have some merit. So, here’s my question for Whitman. Who exactly is stopping you from doing this?

Look, I get it. The Big Ten Conference won’t recognize Illinois as a co-champion for the 2020-21. And in a lot of ways, that just stinks. Now, what can be done about it? Well, what’s stopping anybody at Illinois from just...doing it locally?

Last I checked, the Big Ten Conference doesn’t own and/or have any operating rights over the State Farm Center and any contents inside that building. That would be University of Illinois property.

Therefore, simply add ‘2021’ on the Big Ten champions banner that hangs in the rafters.

Tell me what in the conference bylaws says Illinois is prohibited from doing that?

It just so happens that the Big Ten Conference holds no publishing rights to the school’s annual athletic sports record books. I've got one right beside me as I write this column. The University of Illinois owns the rights to this spiral-bound publication. So, make sure every Illini men’s basketball record book recognizes the 2020-21 team as “co-champions of the Big Ten Conference”.

Go ahead, show me something that says this is a forbidden no-no for a league member.

And correct me if I’m wrong but the Big Ten Conference holds no authority over the bonuses negotiated in the contract of Illini head coach Brad Underwood.

Cool. Anybody think the Big Ten officials or Whitman’s AD colleagues will object if the university agrees to pay Underwood his $150,000 bonus for every time his program wins a Big Ten title? Yeah, of course they won't.

Therefore, according to my math, there is a grand total of nothing stopping Whitman from authorizing any of these things from happening. Not a single thing.

“As a general matter, I favor diplomacy. I prefer discrete, private conversations held with appropriate parties behind the scenes, and I have not hesitated to engage on these and other issues,” Whitman wrote. “As these situations mounted, those conversations intensified. But everybody has a breaking point. Mine was yesterday.”

Okay, let’s put aside the silliness of the idea that Whitman’s “breaking point” wasn’t say trying to plow forward with a collegiate tackle football season during a worldwide health pandemic. Nope. It was whether Illinois basketball got a league title.

And don't laugh. Like it or not, Illini basketball fighting for Big Ten championships is a big darn deal to Whitman. He’s made that very clear with his words and actions. He said so on March 11, 2017 when he fired head coach John Groce.

“I was here 10 years ago. I saw the energy,” Whitman said on March 11, 2017. “I felt the environment at State Farm Center when you couldn’t find a ticket. When every game was an event. When everyone was in an orange shirt. When the list was thousands of people long to get a season ticket to an Illinois basketball game. I remember standing in the crowd and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when the pre-game video went on the board of ‘The champ is here’. You guys remember that? The Ali video from the movie, ‘The champ is here’. I’ve never forgotten the feeling of that place when the team took the floor and that video was on the board. That’s what we’re striving for year in and year out. That was 10 years ago. And if we’re not careful, it’ll be 30 years ago. That’s what I can’t allow to happen.”

Seven days after making that passionate introductory comment, Whitman used his actions to do something about it. He hired Underwood. Four years later, Illini basketball is ranked No. 3 in the nation and sits just days away from being a No. 1 seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament for just the fourth time in school history.

With this letter Whitman has expressed his passion, desire and wishes in words. And now in the coming days, weeks and months, we’ll see if he stands by what he says with future actions. Because let it be very well understood, there is nothing and nobody with the power to stop the University of Illinois from honoring its basketball team as a conference champion locally in its own building, on its own banner and in its own way.

As Napoleon said, if you want something done, do it yourself. Of course, historians recognize that Napoleon ultimately lost to the much superior Russian army and was immediately exiled by all European allies to die a painful death on the island of Elba. So, Whitman, like Napoleon, ultimately has to ask himself one question.

Is this the hill I’m willing to die on?