Commiserating

This is gonna be one of those "stay with me" articles. So stay with me here. It might not make sense at first, but... stay with me.

There have been six absolutely gorgeous fall Saturdays for our six home games. I can hardly believe our luck. The gales of November were nonexistent today. The Michigan game was the absolutely perfect 72 degree fall Saturday. There hasn't been a single "it rained so much this week they might require all large vehicles to park on the pavement in Lot 33 again" game. Just perfect weather.

Because of that – well, because of that and the fire truck – this is BY FAR the most I've leaned into my fandom in the 16 seasons where I've been covering games for the blog. The first four seasons were in the stands, then the next nine seasons I was in the pressbox, and now the last three seasons have been back in the stands. Of those seven seasons in the stands, this one is easily the most "I can just go in at kickoff because these tailgate conversations are so important."

This is intentional, of course. I told you about it when I wrote of my decision to leave the pressbox, buy season tickets, and return to the stands. I didn't like the headspace I was writing from when I was in the pressbox. Basketball games still felt like I was in the crowd when covering a game from press row (because those seats are literally in the crowd), but football games had become too stale. If I'm going to write a single good article for my subscribers, I had to get into a better frame of mind.

I tell people that I did it so I could cheer again, and I did – unleashing a violent triple fist pump when Zakhari Franklin gave us the lead is good for the soul – but I'm often too nervous to make a sound. I don't do well in back-and-forth games like this, and it feels like 75% of our games are just like this one. That's a good thing, of course. It beats he hell out of Iowa 63, Illinois 0. But when the game is tight near the end, I sometimes lack the ability to stand and I crumble back down in my seat. I'm not the "crazy Illini fan making all kinds of noise" that you might think I am.

This year, my tailgate crew added a fire truck to the mix. And that truck, perhaps more than the move back down into the stands, has really altered how I view my job. How I view what I'm trying to accomplish with this whole "quit my job, move to Champaign, and start covering the Illini full time" thing. I don't know if any of this will make sense but here goes.

I've talked to a lot of you at the fire truck this season. Hundreds of you over the six home games, honestly. And I feel like I need to talk about that experience before I talk about the game. I'm gonna put up the paywall right here so that this is just a conversation between me and my subscribers.