Finally, A Schedule

First some "current events", then the schedule talk.

I'm in Idaho for a full week. Tyler is covering the next three basketball games and I'll be joining Light The I episodes remotely. I am on the grandpa duty of all grandpa duties: my son and daughter-in-law will be out of town for a conference and my wife and I are watching our granddaughter and grandson for five full days starting in 36 hours.

Remember, I've never parented a child younger than eight. I married a single mom and adopted her kids. So five days with a three year-old girl and a one year-old boy? It's time to get years of "parenting youngins" condensed into five days.

I'll still have time to write (I think). But I won't be at the next three basketball games - that's all on Tyler. He'll have three gamers to write and three High Five posts (hopefully no Low Five posts) to produce so this will be The Tyler Show for the next week. I'll be fully engulfed in "how to balance the time between dinner and 'it's time to start getting ready for bed' without bringing the whole day to a crashing halt." It's really easy, right?

OK, now to the football schedule talk.

There's that "2016" thing going around on social media right now (or at least the last few weeks) and I have no idea what it means. You're supposed to compare everything to 2016 I guess? I'm gonna do a quick comparison back to 2016.

The Illini bye week back in 2016? September 24th. Before the Big Ten schedule began. It was three non-conference games, then the bye week, and then nine consecutive weekends with Big Ten games. We essentially didn't get a bye week. Everyone else got a break in their Big Ten schedule. For Illinois, it was "you guys are fine playing nine straight Big Ten games, right?"

This schedule? Six games, bye week, six games. I can't get over it. We NEVER get that kind of bye week. We've been screwed on bye weeks (while Ohio State and Michigan get the bye weeks they want) for over 30 years. But this one is perfect.