Fighting Illini Illinois Football Minifigure

On all of our trips to campus to see a Fighting Illini football game down at Memorial Stadium, we do a few things:  park at Frat Chi, walk the quad and buy some stuff at the bookstore or Gameday Sports.  Or both.  On one of those trips in the past few years, I guess I made an impulse buy that I recently came across.  Doing what most of us do at the new year, I decided to clean out my desk drawers.  In one of them, I found a package that contained this Fighting Illini football player minifigure you see below.  He's wearing W-O-W or White - Orange - White...which isn't my favorite look (I'm much more of a traditionalist in O-B-O), but seems like something the team wears a lot these days.    

A few notes:  

1.  He's wearing #00 - which I think has to do with players not being paid to play.

2.  If you look closely at the yoke, you'll see "Team Shield" showing up.  Nice little detail.

3.  He came with a football, but TKOTBS seems to have misplaced it.

4.  The helmet is, I think, current.  The Helmet Project shows this version - white helmet, blue facemask, as helmet "F" and shown as 2014 - current. See below:

Some of the Fighting Illini - University of Illinois football helmets via the Helmet Project.

Here's a sideview of the minifig below.  Note:  no paint on pants.  But the *right* Block I on the helmet.

And, here's the back - showing some backpaint including the player nameplate that reads:  Fighting Illini.

I can't seem to find these anywhere online, so maybe they stopped making them or lost the Illinois license?  Other B1G schools - like Michigan - have stadiums AND minifigs.  So, who knows.

But, there's one thing that is clear:  these are NOT Legos.  They're more like Mega Construx - or knock-off Legos.  The pieces loosely fit together and don't give that same satisfaction that Legos do when you snap them together.