Illinois football fans sound off on choice of helmet against the Oregon Ducks

An announcement from the Illinois football program came down the pipeline, and I am not sure how I feel about it.

This season, athletic director Josh Whitman and his department have done a great job with the choice of helmets. The Illini aren’t going with the same old boring and bland Block I helmets.

Illinois has mixed up the variety quite a bit this season. The 2024 campaign did start with the current Block I helmet, but that Eastern Illinois content is the last time we have seen them.

In the following game, Illinois went with the 2000s Underlined Illinois logo, which brought back great memories. The result of that game was a win over a ranked Kansas program.

Overall, the Underlined Illinois helmets have a record of 2-1 this season with our two wins against Kansas and Nebraska, and the only loss was to now-No. 3 Penn State.

And of course, in the other two games Illinois already played this season, we went with the Four Stars helmet against Purdue and the great-looking Painted Leather helmets against Michigan. Both were victories.

Moving forward, there are only two games that have scheduled helmets. Illinois is breaking out the Military Appreciation helmets against Minnesota. We are then going with the Block I helmet against Michigan State.

That leaves the Oregon, Rutgers, and Northwestern games with undecided helmets. Well, on Friday night, Illinois announced that we would be wearing the Block I helmet against the Ducks for the game on Saturday.

Illinois football fans sound off on the choice of the Block I helmet against the Oregon Ducks

This was an interesting choice to go back to the Block I helmet against the No. 1 team in the country. Personally, I think those are blah helmets. They don’t bring anything to the table as far as excitement and energy, which is ironic considering we are going up against Oregon, which usually has the most unique get-up in the country.

At the end of the day, the play on the field is what really matters. But Illinois football fans did express their feelings on the choice of the Block I helmets for this massive game.