The last Illinois coach to win the fabled Hat trophy was literally Tim Beckman, the state's most prominent doofus-coach. Beckman did a heroic service to this particular blog as the first person I am aware of who went all-in unironically on the woeful rivalry between these two programs by printing what many prominent archaeologists recognize as the only anti-Northwestern rivalry merchandise ever produced, referred to Northwestern as "that school upstate" presumably because he was not quite able to wrap his head around Northwestern's northern and slightly eastern distance from Champaign, and, as we later learned from documents related to the lawsuit that led to his dismissal, made his injured players wear purple in order to show that they are weak.
Sad Cat Hat Chat
