Why I Oughta...

The 2024 season for the Fighting Illini will be one that I remember for A LONG TIME.  We went to a number of home games down in Champaign and between the start times (2:30 pm on CBS!), the weather (Chamber of Commerce Days), the tailgating (Thanks to Equation Boy/Man for Lot 31) and...well...the winning....the 'vibes' (as the kids say) are way different this year than they have for MOST of my fandom. Yesterday, the DIA annouced we've accepted a bid to play the South Carolina Gamecocks in the Cheez-it Citrus Bowl on the afternoon of New Year's Eve.  From the Fighting Illini Football press release : The #20 Illinois football team has accepted an invitation to play in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida, it was announced Sunday. Illinois will play #15 South Carolina at Camping World Stadium on Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 2 p.m. CT on ABC. The Illini qualified for the 21st bowl game in program history and the Illini's second New Year's bowl in Florida in the last...

My Fighting Illini football team have done something that I've appreciated this year uniform-wise:  they've stuck with orange.  Orange helmets every game.  Sounds like it is something that Bret Bielema has pushed .  And I'm here for it.  This past weekend in Iowa City, we had a lovely uniform matchup with the Illini going O-W-O.  And the Hawkeyes doing their traditional home B-B-Y.   But, that clearly wasn't the best-looking college football game of the weekend.  Not by a mile.  That honor is held by the UCLA vs. USC game.  Here's a look at the 2nd half kickoff that was happening as I tuned in (The Illini game had just finished up).  Both teams wear their home colors during this game - both at the Colosseum and at the Rose Bowl.  At least that's what I thought happened.   Turns out, there's a bit more history to the story.  According to the OC Register  there was a period when it wasn't the calvalcade ...

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 ...

File this under:  I went to X and only got this crummy photograph of my visit.  Here's Denver recently .  And Denver a few years back .  And Denver once again .  All in the same series.  This time, it was Columbus Ohio and Ohio Stadium from the window seat in my American Airlines flight on a recent weekday.  During my time on the Fighting Illini (backup punter!), I didn't get to travel to Ohio Stadium, so I've never been inside the place.  But, it looks pretty rad from the air, so I imagine it was pretty awesome back in 2007 when the Illini upset then #1 OSU . The good news is that I'm going to be back in Columbus every once in a while, so there's hope that I'll get in there after all.   

A few days back, I mentioned that we had attended a game at Notre Dame Stadium and while there were a lot of 'special touches' at the Stadium/game, one that stood out was that they gave away half dollar coins from the concession stands.  Well...the game turned into a bit of a blowout, so late in the 3rd quarter, I took a walk around the bowels of the stadium.  I wanted to see all the light fixtures, reused sections of bleachers, how the old/new stadium fit together and various other things that adorn the interior of the stadium. One of the things that they've done to represent some of their strong history is to blow up and and install vintage program covers from games of past around the concourse.  And guess what?  One of those football game programs was from a game between Washington University and the Fighting Irish.  Yeah...Wash U. That's Nat's alma mater.  And now a Division III football program that I affectionately call the "Teddy Bears"....