HONK

I'm standing outside the Walgreens at Windsor and Duncan, which is a normal thing that normal people do (while I waited for a prescription to be filled, my wife ran home real quick to get something she forgot and my prescription was ready before she got back). As I'm standing there, a guy gets in his car right in front of me, starts the car, and looks to back out of his parking space.

Then he honks. There was a car pulling into the Walgreens parking lot, they were driving the aisle behind him, and he didn't like it. He needed to back out, dammit. HOOONNNNNNK.

He's then headed west on Windsor. Which means he's sitting at that stop sign leaving the Village Green Place development with his left blinker on. There's no stop sign for cars in either direction on Windsor so he just has to wait for a gap with no cars in either direction before he can go. There's a car in the left turn lane, waiting to turn into Village Green, and they're waiting for several cars headed eastbound on Windsor. Once they clear, the car turns left into Village Green.

HOOONNNNNNK.

He wasn't happy that... a car with the right of way and no stop sign was turning in I guess? The road was clear in both directions after that and he turned left so... I guess they simply didn't turn in quickly enough and deserved a honk? Maybe he got confused, thought he was at a four-way stop, and thought it was his turn? Not sure. But he let them have a long honk as they turned in front of him.

In both of these scenarios that I observed (both the same car, both within 45 seconds of each other), the other car was perfectly within their rights to be there, driving in that spot. Neither was going too slow for the moment. They were just there, and the rules of the road say that he has to wait for them to pass before he can proceed, and he didn't like waiting, so HOOONNNNNNNK.

At its core, it's the behavior of an infant. When we're all three years old and our cousin has the toy we want, we take the toy. We might even shove the cousin away from the toy. WANT TOY. And then our parents teach us about sharing and taking turns and we slowly realize that our impulses aren't always correct. That car doesn't have a stop sign, so they can turn left into the shopping center that we're leaving, and we just have to wait. If it's frustrating, that's on us, not them. Nobody did anything wrong. We just WANT TOY and refuse to take turns.

I feel like this is the societal norm in 2026. Frustration feels pretty good ("why can't everyone see things my way - which is OBVIOUSLY THE CORRECT WAY?") and so we default to it. There is temporary satisfaction that comes from telling someone "can you believe this person treated me this way?" and so we settle into a frustration groove. And that frustration groove has a lot of demands. Right up until we reach "I'm trying to back out here HOW DARE THAT CAR BE DRIVING INTO THE WALGREENS LOT???"

Why am I telling you this? Because during this bye week, I've been reflecting on the Illini football feedback loop. And the only thing I can see is one big HOOONNNNNNNK. Yes, there are frustrations with this season, and yes, we're now more likely to miss a bowl than make a bowl, but it's impossible to discuss with all of these car horns blaring. There's no discernible difference between the frustration in 2016 when we went 0-9 in the Big Ten and 2026 when we're 3-3 to start the season. People just WANT TOY.

I'll pause here and tell you all the things I'm not saying:

• "No one should be frustrated with this 3-3 start." Nope. Not saying that at all. Frustration is fine. Behaving like it's 2016 is not.
• "We're going to have a 5-1 finish to the season and then you'll all eat your words." Nope. I've started accumulating stats for this week's NERDstat post and things are getting worse, not better.
• "It's all of this criticism that's the problem." Nope. It's the tone. It's the HOOONNNNNNNK. It's turning into the most petulant fanbase in the B1G.

I get that this is just society now. Commiseration has been replaced by its cousin, "Can You Believe?" and coffee shop conversations have flipped from two people sharing each other's burdens to two people getting 30 minutes to talk followed by the pre-arranged "I can't believe they treated you that way" response. So it's only natural that fandom follows the same "I can't believe the administration/coaches/players have done this to the fans" path. Everything is an affront. Everything.

It leaves me with a very difficult environment to send words out into. My writing process is to study the current fanbase configuration and attempt to answer the questions I see. But there are very few questions anymore. All I hear are the car horns.

And when I say "car horn" here, remember that I'm using it in the sense of the guy so frustrated with life that he honks at a car driving in a parking lot preventing him from being able to back out. It's simply a default. Introspection is gone. There's not an ounce of "man, what's going on with me that I can't even handle a car turning left in front of me?" There's no balance to any of it.

Let me give you an example. If I'm having a conversation with Illini fans about this football team, on Twitter or in the comments or in group texts, and I mention that the starting quarterback and the starting running back are now out for the year with injuries, the car horns immediately honk. The horns are so loud that it feels like an attempt to drown out what I'm saying. It's almost... fearful?

Maybe I'm just old and I have to accept that this is how sports are discussed now. Maybe this is just the natural byproduct of ESPN's transformation from "show the highlights" to "show the talking heads yelling at each other." Maybe the change in my kids' generation from "let's discuss our teams" to "let's discuss all teams and how to gamble on them" has led to this shift. Maybe nobody has "hey, that's MY TEAM you're talking about, tread lightly" reactions anymore.

And yes, maybe NIL is to blame. Maybe this is just the professionalization of college sports and the natural switch from "do your best, boys" to "you're getting paid HOW MUCH to drop that interception?". Perhaps I'll look around the room in five years and see that I'm the only one still wearing the "this is my team, and I'll defend them forever" shirt. Maybe NIL truly was the death of the thing I love.

But I don't feel like that now. I didn't feel like that at the Citrus Bowl and I didn't feel like that at the Final Four. I see a fanbase still willing to embrace a team and its players on a "let's go meet the team by the highway as they head off to state on the bus" high school sense. The social media (and message board) dialogue may be awful right now, but I still know that the line to get into the tailgating lots on Saturday will be a mile long. In that tailgate bubble, there will be all kinds of conversations about "let's see what Clayton has" and "give Hankins a start and see what he can do." A 3-3 finish and a bowl will be very difficult – not with this pass defense, and not with the QB and RB out – but I'm still hoping to charge into the new Ryan Field in November (with 16,000 Illini fans and 14,000 Northwestern fans) with a focus on getting that sixth win and a bowl.

I just... could we... could we just maybe stop with all the honking? We get it. You want to pull out of your parking space. You're in a hurry. But this is just how the world works. Sometimes, things don't go like you plan them. So you accept them, commiserate, and move on.

Starting Saturday. Go Illini. Beat the Ducks.

Don't let any of their players rent a car in Champaign.