The 1940 Illinois Fighting Illini football team was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

team that represented the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

during the

1940 Big Ten Conference football season The 1940 Big Ten Conference football season was the 45th season of college football played by the member schools of the Big Ten Conference (also known as the Western Conference) and was a part of the 1940 college football season. The University of ...

. In their 28th season under head coach

Robert Zuppke Robert Carl Zuppke (July 2, 1879 – December 22, 1957) was an American football coach. He served as the head coach at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1913 until 1941, compiling a career college football record of 131–81� ...

, the Illini compiled a 1–7 record (0–5 against conference opponents), finished in last place in the

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

, and were outscored by a total of 144 to 71. Fullback George Bernhardt was selected as the team's most valuable player. Illinois was ranked at No. 62 (out of 697 college football teams) in the final rankings under the Litkenhous Difference by Score system for 1940. The team played its home games at Memorial Stadium in

Champaign, Illinois Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in Illinois outside the Chicago metro ...

Schedule

References

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

Illinois Fighting Illini football seasons

Illinois Fighting Illini football The Illinois Fighting Illini football program represents the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in college football at the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) level. The Fighting Illini are a founding member of ...

{{Illinois-sport-team-stub