So Thankful For This Bye Week

It probably sounds dumb to say this given that I'm just a guy who covers the team, not a guy who has to coach or play on this team. The players and coaches are putting in 90-hour weeks and here I am saying "man, I need a break." But after five weeks thinking about pretty much nothing but this team and fire trucks, I need to get my brain to think about something else for a while.

(Anyone have any suggestions?)

I guess the best way for me to get there is to do a big ol' brain dump. While traveling back from Penn State (on the train, of course) I was pretty much just on my phone or laptop looking up college football statistics. Some people play golf, some people read books, I try to see if there's a college football metric they ain't identified yet. Longsnapper Catch Radius (LCR), coming soon to a blog near you.

I have to say, after this week's research, I don't exactly feel great about this potentially being a 9-3 season or something similarly amazing. But just typing those words makes me happy. {sarcastic voice} "Oh no! This Illinois football season might only be a 7-5 year which would be just the fourth year with seven or more regular season wins in the 2000's." {sarcastic voice off} Not that! Not the fourth-best season of the last 25!

Sorry. Turned sarcastic voice off a little too soon.

Maybe I'll start with kind of a "where I stand after all of this research" section. And I'll get right to your main fear when I typed the words "I don't feel great" above: