The 88 Illini

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

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

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

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

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

I just did it again. I looked up the next four players on my list, I thought "there's no way all four of these players are in the 60's", I went back through the entire list from 1 to 68 and... I couldn'