The 88 Illini: #32-#29
I'm just gonna tell you want parenting is like at my age and then I'm gonna get to the next four players on The 88 Illini. Actually, I'm going to tell you what grandparenting is like.
I'm currently with the entire fam
Latest
Interceptions 2026
Year 14 for the interceptions article. If you want to read any of the previous posts, just go up to that spyglass search thingy in the top left corner, type "interceptions" into the box, and you'll see the last eight articles all in order.
And since
The 88 Illini: #36-#33
Well, the email just came through announcing the first press conference for the fall. Which means that the season is actually here. Time to buckle in and tell my wife "we won't have any open weekends until April - is that OK?" again. And time to... wait,
Cornfields
I'm starting this post in Leverett. I'm on the evening train bound for Chicago and Big Ten Media Days tomorrow morning. Leverett isn't really a town. It's the grain elevators and maybe two houses along the train tracks north of Champaign but
The 88 Illini #40-#37
I noted this on Twitter just now but I wanted to write something about it as well. We'll get to the next four players on the list here in a moment but first I wanted to write something about the block I logo. If you're not
The 88 Illini: #44-#41
Another quick reminder that the latest 88 Illini post won't always be at the top. I published two articles the other day and "Blip" was in front of the latest 88 Illini post. So if you didn't see it (and I know many of
Blip
45 days until the football season. That's kind of insane. When you combine the whole "there's no angst at all" thing that I wrote about a few weeks ago (there are small, meaningless concerns right now but overall, the Big Two programs are as
The 88 Illini: #48-#45
Just wanted to remind you of the "countdown flexibility" I've given myself here. When I first started writing these countdown posts 15 years ago, I tried to make them daily posts that counted down to the first game of the season. And I rarely ever stayed
The 88 Illini: #52-#49
I still have this sense that people aren't getting it. I've kept the section below the "recent posts" section on the front page (where I can feature a certain series) as last season's "NERDstats" posts because I wanted "How
Checking The Odds
I feel like this will be 1 of 12 articles I write on the topic of "what to do when there are incredibly high expectations for your college basketball team" this year. It's not something we experience very often – this will only be the fourth time
The 88 Illini: #56-#53
Do you want to know the biggest shift in my life the last six months? No, it's not "my football team beat another SEC team in a bowl game and my basketball team went to the Final Four." It's being on campus once or
The 88 Illini: #60-#57
Now we are reaching the numbers I think you'll see on the field. Maybe it's only some lineman you'll see on extra points and field goals, but I'm pretty sure these sixty Illini will see action at some point.
I always say
The 88 Illini: #64-#61
If you're sitting there and you're like "Robert, where are #68 through #65 because I keep a chart of the entire 88 Illini with individual magnets on my refrigerator and just this morning my six year-old son swapped out Michael McDonough and Connor Sullivan
The Cauldron
As far as Things To Write About go, I'm not sure I can remember a time like this. Yes, there's always something to write about, but... let me see if I can explain this.
I only write with my fan brain. In late 2008 I decided