Camp Champaign

(free post)

I had a routine for Camp Rantoul. I would always stay at the Super 8 out by the interstate in Rantoul. I would always get a room with two beds. I would always use one bed for sleeping and one bed for clothing. And going to (and returning from) practice had a very set routine:

-> Change out of t-shirt and shorts (my writing uniform) and put on nicer shorts and maybe a polo.
-> Leave for practice.
-> Return from practice to an incredibly cold hotel room (and note that I'm entering that room after standing around in the August Rantoul heat so it's always ice cold).
-> Immediately (and I mean immediately) change back into my t-shirt and shorts which I laid out on the bed. Place the nicer shorts on the bed as well for practice the next day.
-> Eat whatever food I brought home after practice (usually Arby's since it's right next to the Super 8).
-> Write up practice notes and then work on whatever article I've been working on.

I'd usually have a rental car for Camp Rantoul as well. During those summers (between 2009 and 2015) we had 4 and then 5 drivers in the family so I'd always leave my car at home and take a rental to Rantoul because our boys would be driving all of our cars all over the place, especially in the evenings. So I have this very specific memory of rental cars and cold hotel rooms and clothing on the bed and practice notes.

Yesterday, after hitting a deer on Saturday night (I'm totally fine, the car is not), I dropped off the car at the repair shop (still somewhat drivable) and picked up the rental car that I'll be driving for the next few weeks. It was the start of me landing on a core memory but I didn't sense it yet.

There was a press conference at 6:15 and then there were open periods of practice (open to the media) at 6:45 last night. So in the afternoon, I did a Q&A on Slack. The reason I'm talking so much about Slack over the last week: 20% of our subscribers at the Grange and Seventeen Club levels, who all get access to Slack, have never followed the link to sign up for Slack. So that 20% is still paying for the extras but not visiting Slack to see everything that is published over there now. They're just reading words here (and probably wondering where all the football camp stuff went).

12 of those people reached out with "Hey Robert, I never signed up for Slack and the link you sent me expired - can you send it again?" emails in the last few days after I wrote about it on Thursday. I'm sure there are still others reading these words who don't know that last night's practice notes totaled 1,638 words over on Slack. So if you're one of those at the Grange or Seventeen Club level, send me an email (robert@illiniboard.com) and let's get you access to Slack. You never have to post a single thing there. You can just log in and read.

One other thing about that since I sent four of these emails yesterday: if you have an introductory ($25) subscription, it moves up to the base level (Grange) after one year. So it will be upgrading to $77 per year on your renewal date. If you upgrade now, it prorates the amount of the upgrade. Someone yesterday, whose renewal date is September 28th, upgraded from Introductory to Grange for $7.82. That gets them in to Slack (practice notes and Q&A's) as well as the football preview that comes out on August 25th. His renewal charge would be $77 on September 28th either way, so this eight bucks gets him those things early.

Enough about that. Where was I? Yes. The Q&A on Slack.

Between 4:00 and 6:00, after picking up the rental car, I did a Q&A on Slack. If you're wondering what all of that looks like, it looks like this:

The little avatar with me holding the I - that indicates there's a reply from me in there when you click on it. And then anyone who wants to talk about that response replies under that. Doing these things on Slack remind me of doing these things on my first blog (before merging with IlliniBoard) back in the early 2010's. It's just... I'm at camp, you have questions, let me answer your questions.

I then put a pause on answering those questions because the press conference was coming up. I went to change real quick (I changed in the spare bedroom which is right next to the laundry room), I tossed my t-shirt and shorts on the bed, and I suddenly flashed back to Camp Rantoul. This was the first moment in my 5+ years living in Champaign that covering camp felt like Rantoul (and not just because of the t-shirt and shorts on the spare bed).

As I've mentioned before, when I moved to Champaign in 2020, fresh off 11 consecutive years covering one of the two weeks of open training camp, I was ready to finally attend every moment of every practice. It's the one thing I wanted to do the most. Then Covid shut down 2020 training camp and open training camp never returned. I knew it would someday go away (Illinois was one of the few remaining schools that still did NFL-style "first two weeks are open to fans and media" camps), and starting in 2020, that style camp went away. The #1 thing I wanted to do after moving here was gone. I've whined about it ever since.

This year, at least for the first three practices, we've gotten much more consistent access. They still don't want us to see any 11 on 11 stuff (I get it – I don't like it, and I could write practice notes that wouldn't give away a single formation or play call – but I understand that others wouldn't follow those rules so they can't do it). It's notable that we've gotten to see a lot more individual work than the last few years, however. Last night was close to 50 minutes. Which is SO helpful when trying to prepare myself to write the big preview. I want to at least get my eyes on every player.

So you can see why I'm so fired up to write all of this today. You can see why the 1,638 words about practice on Slack were written in only 45 minutes last night (which then led into another 1,500 words in responding to questions before I went to bed). The words are flying out of my fingers right now.

Mostly because, for the first time since I moved here, I'm in that Rantoul groove. Last night for me:

-> I toss my t-shirt and shorts on the spare bed and put on some nicer clothes.
-> I drive to practice in a rental car.
-> After the press conference, I get to watch 10 minutes of the players filing in and then the first 50 minute of practice, taking note after note.
-> I stop by somewhere on my way home to get some food.
-> When I walk into the house the cold air hits me right in the face.
-> I go directly (and I mean directly) to the spare bedroom to get out of my nicer shirt and nicer shorts and change into my writing uniform.
-> I sit down at the laptop, eat dinner, and then unload the 1,600 words about what I saw.
-> I then answer question after question until I'm ready for bed.

Between answering Q&A questions and writing up practice notes, from 4:15 pm to 6:00 pm and then from 8:20 pm to 10:30 pm, I wrote 5,378 Illini football words on Slack. That's a 20 page paper in college, double spaced. Written in 3 hours and 55 minutes. I am, as they say, feeling it right now.

I'm writing all of this to let you know that this is very important to me in two ways:

1. It finally feels like Camp Rantoul up in here. If Turner, Zook, and Beckman had Camp Rantoul and Lovie had Camp Urbana (my name for it), this is finally Camp Champaign.
2. Camp Champaign has arrived just in time for the most anticipated Illini season of my lifetime.

The practices are crisp. The players know what they're doing. There's just as much player instruction ("don't put your hands outside, keep them inside") as there is coaching instruction. This is the fifth year of this defense (third year with this coordinator) and the fourth year of this offense with this coordinator. If training camp in 2017 was mostly confusion, training camp in 2025 is mostly clarity.

Look, wins aren't guaranteed. The football is still oblong, it bounces funny, and 99-yard fumble returns turn 34-21 wins into 28-27 losses with one single play. We've never experienced this before, but every year, there are those teams that get the breaks and go 11-1 or get the bad breaks and go 8-4. It's been happening up at the top of the college football universe for decades. We've just never visited there. Here.

Which is why these first three practices have felt like such an arrival to me. Not only am I finally feeling the Camp Rantoul vibes, I'm finally seeing what a top-25 practice should have looked like all along. I've watched so many teams go through practices where 5-7 was the ceiling that I wasn't sure if I'd know how to handle a practice where 5-7 was the floor.

Yes, I'll pause to address it. For some of you, that scares you. "Oh God, what if injuries decimate us and we tumble to 5-7? What if this is Kansas 2024 part II?"

For me? Honestly? I'm enjoying the hell out of that being the floor. I spent a week-plus at Camp Rantoul in 2013 when the absolute ceiling was 5 wins. I spent a week-plus at Camp Urbana in 2017 when the ceiling was 4 wins. I've written hundreds of thousands of words about teams that had zero chance to win even six games.

So "what if absolutely everything goes wrong and we go 5-7", at least in that sense, doesn't scare me. Because "what if we never?" is gone. "What if this never happens and I'm just covering 4-8 teams the rest of my life?" is completely put to bed now. I can focus on other things.

Like... what if everything goes right? What if Indiana falls back and USC is still a mess and 2025 is the weakest Ohio State team this decade? I've been writing about all of this depth we show at practice - what if that depth helps us to 10 or 11 wins? I couldn't even begin to dream it before, but now I can smell it in the air over at the corner of 1st and Kirby.

I'm not ready to tell you yet how I think the season will go. But I am ready to tell you that this might be the most experienced team I've covered. And that there are player leaders. And that there's confidence in the air.

Being here for that? Getting to drive home and let the air conditioning blast me as I change into my writing clothes? It's all I've ever wanted from doing this.

A week ago on Slack I simply noted that "it's here." The season we've been talking about all summer? It's here. #12 in the coaches poll? It's here. The football program we've always wanted?

It's here.