Illinois AD Pens Scathing Letter Over Big Ten Title Controversy

Michigan was dubbed the Big Ten regular season champion, but Illinois isn't going down without a fight.

The battle for the Big Ten regular season title might've come to a close, but Illinois director of athletics Josh Whitman didn't let their fight for "an equitable outcome" go unnoticed. 

He penned a strongly-worded letter on Tuesday, stating that despite advocating for co-champions to be named, Michigan would remain the sole regular season title holder. 

"We should not have had to advocate for ourselves—this is the right outcome for the Big Ten and one that it should have proactively sought," Whitman wrote. "But nonetheless, we were left to fight our own battle, and despite our advocacy, I learned late yesterday that our efforts were unsuccessful. Michigan will remain outright champions."

Whitman made it clear that they "have not endeavored to take anything away from Michigan." However, he felt that Illinois deserved part of the title after the unprecedented season. 

The conference's athletics directors and Council of Presidents and Chancellors came to a decision prior to the season to determine the league’s regular season champion by overall winning percentage. At that point, they assumed the COVID-19 pandemic would result in some programs playing less than the allotted 20 conference games.

"The winning percentage metric was meant to "level the playing field" for those teams that might suffer more significant disruption than others," Whitman wrote in his open letter.

In the end, Michigan secured the highest winning percentage in the league with its win over Michigan State on Thursday evening despite not meeting the allotted 20 games. However, Illinois secured the most conference wins (16) in the Big Ten and played out the entire schedule of 20 games. Whitman said Illinois not getting a share of the conference title 'defies logic.'

"In basketball, I believe teams deserve the title 'conference champion' when they have proven themselves to be superior to their peers through their on-court performance for the duration of the season," Whitman wrote. "In normal years, teams play the same number of games, making this an apples-to-apples, objective evaluation. Unfortunately for all of us, this is not that year. This year, we have many elite teams, including two that finished their seasons with 16-4 and 14-3 records, respectively. 

"The 15% difference in the number of games played presents an apples-to-oranges comparison that is not easily resolved."