Illinois basketball is off my AP Top 25 ballot for now

If you’ve never spent New Year’s Day being insulted from morning ’til night by aggrieved sports fans on social media, believe me, it’s almost as fun as it sounds.

“Tool.” “Clown.” “Troll.” “Dumb.” “Stupid.” “Ass.” “Loser.” “Bum.” These are just some of the things my dear old mother called me as I wished her a happy new year and explained to her what was happening.

I kid, of course. She’d never call her baby boy a bum. And it wasn’t even she who hurled the rest of those pejoratives, along with many others, at me on Monday. It was Illinois men’s basketball supporters.

Why did they do it? Because they’re maniacs. The most delightful sort, of course.

But also because I kind of had it coming.

Out of 63 voters in this week’s AP Top 25, I was the only one to leave the 10-2 Illini off my ballot. There are layers to why I did it, but the main reason was the indefinite suspension of star guard Terrence Shannon Jr. — charged with rape in Kansas — whom I believe was on track to be a first-team All-American until his shocking removal from the team late last week. It’s a huge loss for the Illini to suddenly be without their best player, one of the top scorers in the country and a projected first-round NBA draft pick.

As I filled out my ballot on Sunday, the Illini kept sliding down until there were three spots left and four teams I was considering for them. I moved 10-2 Auburn and 13-1 Nevada in, kept 13-0 James Madison at No. 25 and bounced the Illini (along with Creighton and Gonzaga). I figured I’d get a couple of looks at them afresh — against Northwestern on Tuesday and No. 1 Purdue on Friday — and go from there. But dropping them from No. 9 on my last ballot to out altogether on my new one surely was one of the bigger moves, up or down, I’ve made with any team in my years as a voter.

Was it an overcorrection? I can buy that charge, especially given the size of the protest after a social-media account that tracks poll results by voter outed me, along with a couple of others, for being Week 9 outliers. One of them had actually moved Gonzaga up on his ballot despite its fourth loss and ongoing poor play. Another had moved Arizona up several spots despite the Wildcats having just been blown out by sub-.500 Stanford. Then there was Illinois and me — arguably the most egregious case of all considering my fellow voters actually moved the Illini up in the poll, from 11th with Shannon to ninth without him.

Moving the Illini up was, to me, inexplicable. If Zach Edey were suspended indefinitely, would Purdue stay at No. 1? No, it would tumble like a locomotive off a collapsed bridge and rightfully so. I wouldn’t rank the Boilermakers at all without Edey, certainly not right away. I’m not sure I would view them as an upper-half team in the Big Ten without their superstar. Then again, Shannon is no Edey, who carries a bigger load for his team than any other player has in a very long time. It could be that I overestimated Shannon’s value and/or sold his teammates short. We’ll know better soon.

The voters didn’t drop the Illini, but some others did. Big Ten Network’s Andy Katz dropped them from second to sixth in his ranking of conference teams. Betting sites no longer have the Illini among the top 25 teams according to odds to win the national championship. If these are “hot takes,” they seem pretty sensible to me.

Meanwhile, the backlash itself was also amusing. Part of the twisted, insidious, unintended humor of social media is the absurdity of people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about piling on to accuse others of not knowing what the hell they’re talking about. Certainly no segment of society likes to tell journalists about their jobs more than those who have never been journalists — or even dime-a-dozen poll voters.

“You should lose your voting rights!” some angry Illini fans contended, as if a single slight of the team they cheer for would ever matter in the least to anyone else, anywhere else.

Many made the point articulated by one person as, “Polls are a judgment of what a team has done to date, not a speculation on the future.” Says who? Polls are what they are, a collection of opinions of those giving them. There are no rules for voters about how to view each week of the season. In my view, the best ballots are — ideally — honest stabs at where things are at right now, not where they were in December or might be at the end of the season. Illinois isn’t the same team without Shannon that it was with him. Should I have suspended awareness of his absence just to protect Chad from Mattoon from having his feelings hurt?

Someone wrote of me and my fellow outliers, “It couldn’t be more obvious that these three voters are either clueless, lazy, don’t know basketball or hired bad interns to do it for them.” I’ll be damned if I’m going to just sit here and let anyone imply that I would ever have an intern.

Another common accusation was that an omission as indefensible as mine with the Illini could only have been done “for attention.” Right, because being chastised by grammatically challenged bros never fails to hit the spot.

Or maybe I’m just an Illini hater? That’s what some say. It’s childish and silly of them, though I do admit to feeling an occasional twinge of resentment for any school to which I’ve forked over tens of thousands of dollars to educate an offspring.

But, listen, New Year’s Day wasn’t all bad. At least I also whiffed on both my published College Football Playoff picks. No extra charge.