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The Should vs. Did Crisis

That's it - I'm calling it a crisis. It's a crisis. We're at a pivot point and it cannot pivot in the direction it's been trending. Logic must be applied. Understanding must be reached. (Yes, it's fully basketball

What Can You Say?

We hosted a dinner party tonight. So I got home from the game, shoveled snow, helped clean the house, and then we had people here from 6:00 to 11:00. My wife went to bed, I grabbed my laptop, I sat down here at the end of the kitchen

Where Do We Stand? January 10th

Back-to-back NERDstat posts. The final football one and now the second basketball one. I haven't updated the basketball I-N-I since I left for Florida but now that I'm back in snowy Illinois, let's take a look at Where We Stand. Spoiler: we stand in

So Maybe Just One More

I said that I was done NERDstatting for football. But then we won the Citrus Bowl. And I'll I've done for the last week is look at the NERDstats as they updated to see where we'd land after beating South Carolina. It's

Let It Snow

I'm a snow guy. I get excited when there's a snowstorm approaching. If there's ever snow in the forecast and suddenly the rain/snow line moves to where I'm getting rain and 20 miles north gets snow, I want to move 20

Citrus Bowl VIX: You Had To Be There

I'm still not home yet. We planned to split the drive into two days, and with the snow, we decided to extend our night in Chattanooga into the next afternoon so that the plows have plenty of time to clear the interstates in Illinois. We're leaving

Escaped The Trap

The Big Ten basketball schedule comes at you pretty fast. With apologies to Ferris Bueller, in no way should you stop and look around once in a while. The better advice - especially in January - is to keep looking forward. You lay a historic beat down on #9 Oregon

Citrus Bowl VIII: 2025 Depth Chart

I'm still down here in Florida so these are technically Citrus Bowl posts. Well, not the basketball articles, but if it's a football post, until I leave sunny Florida for snowy Illinois, it's gonna get the "Citrus Bowl + Roman numeral" treatment. With

I'm Lovin' It

Bah dah bah bah bah. Let's start with this. I wasn't there. Tyler wasn't there. We broke our 3-year streak of either him or me covering a game in person last March when I had to leave Omaha to attend to a personal matter

Illini Power Rankings: 2,143 Miles Just For Some Guy Named Gene

Exactly two days after I graduated from the University of Illinois in May 1997, my father and I packed up my 1993 Toyota Camry and drove across the country to Los Angeles, where I was scheduled, one week later, to start a job at U. The National College Magazine. Older

Citrus Bowl VII: Bullet Points

I didn't include all of the usual bullet points that go at the end of nearly every gamer on this site. So I need to fix that real quick. (I think that's the first time I've ever used the word "gamer" here.

Citrus Bowl VI: The Point

I have an unofficial research department. His name is Nathan. And he's been looking things up (and building spreadsheets for me) for 10+ years. When I think I see something for the first time – like the combined three point shooting in the Oakland basketball game last month – I

Citrus Bowl V: Stream Of Consciousness

This has been unlike any other bowl week for me. I wrote about it the first day I got here and it remains the same tonight less than 18 hours until game time. These SOC posts are always a long ramble down Here's What's On My

Citrus Bowl IV: Those Were The Days

Yes, it's after 11:00 pm EST and I'm just now remembering to publish Those Were The Days. Hey, it gives you two things to read in the morning. You can read the SOC and you can read what Detlef thought about the 1994 Liberty Bowl.