Crim: Early-season matchups could determine if Fighting Illini can muster elusive winning season

QUINCY — Random thoughts with the opening night of high school football season just 40 days away:

• Illinois has had just four winning football seasons since the 10-2 Sugar Bowl team under Ron Turner in 2001. The program has been mired in mediocrity, managing just 15 campaigns of eight or more wins in 134 years of football. There have been only nine bowl appearances in the last 31 years.

(By comparison, Northwestern has played in 11 bowls in the past 18 years.)

The Illini, coming off an eight-win season in 2022, got off to a slow start and then lost three of their final five games by a combined eight points last season to finish 5-7. Most prognosticators don’t see them being much of a factor in the beefed up Big Ten Conference this fall, predicting between three and six victories.

Illinois doesn’t have to face Ohio State, Washington, USC, Wisconsin or Iowa, but it does play Michigan at home and Penn State and Oregon on the road. Games versus Kansas at home and Nebraska on the road early will likely be tone-setters.

Victories could mean a potential bowl berth, while losses could signal another long season is in store — something Illini fans have become all-too-accustomed to.

• The Masters remains my favorite golf tournament of the year, partly because it is played on the same course each April, with Augusta National’s pageantry and rich history, and coincides with the beginning of spring when we can dust off our clubs.

The Open Championship is a close second, however, because it’s the tournament everyday hackers can relate to. Links golf with wind, rain, tall fescue grass, uneven lies, firm and unpredictable fairways, pot bunkers and slow greens produce sights we rarely see on the PGA Tour — the world’s best golfers struggling.

In a world of John Deere Classics, Open venues like Royal Troon place a premium on shot-making and perseverance against adversity. Disaster is always lurking.

Scoring-friendly TPC Deere Run, by comparison, yielded 2,055 birdies through 72 holes earlier this month, the most made in any event this season. The 748 birdies in the Thursday round alone were only two fewer than The Memorial yielded over four days. The winner, Davis Thompson, set the scoring record at 28-under.

While fans love to see players score, too many courses are being obliterated by today’s golf ball and equipment. The Open offers a necessary respite.

• Tiger Woods was not around for the weekend. The three-time Champion Golfer of the Year struggled through rounds of 79 and 77. It was discouraging to watch arguably the game’s greatest player struggle like a journeyman to miss the cut for the third straight major.

Woods insists he can still win despite playing a limited schedule centered around the four majors, and fans would love to see him in contention on a Sunday again. But it appears those days are no more, his body betrayed by age and too many injuries. And that’s sad.

• As a baseball traditionalist who has never embraced the designated hitter or inter-league play, let alone putting a runner on second base to begin an extra inning, Major League Baseball should return to having players wear their individual team uniforms in the All-Star Game. It’s how fans identify with players.

National League and American League players resembled slow-pitch softball teams this year with the hideous, weird-colored uniforms that made no sense. Nike and Fanatics will be sorely disappointed if they hope to entice people to spend money on those jerseys.

• If you need further proof that quarterback contracts are out of control in the NFL, Exhibit A is Joe Montana, a Hall of Famer who Sports Illustrated rated as the No. 1 clutch QB of all time in 2006. (Obviously, this was before Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes reset the bar, but even that’s pretty select company.)

Montana won four Super Bowl championships in as many tries with the 49ers yet earned a meager $25.5 million during his playing career from 1979-94. His highest single-season salary was $4 million, which he received during his final two seasons with the Chiefs. That wouldn’t get you a decent backup QB today.

(Speaking of backups, Mizzou legend Chase Daniel earned more than $40 million during a 14-year career that featured only a handful of starts. Carrying a clipboard is great work if you can get it.)

Six quarterbacks not named Mahomes will earn $50 million or more this season, and the eventuality of paying a QB $100 million a year as some suggest doesn’t seem that far-fetched.

Mama, let your sons grow up to be quarterbacks.