State Of The Union 2025

I view this as the start of the offseason. Yes, there's still Illini sports to cover. The NCAA Golf regional is in Champaign (actually Urbana) this year. I want to get to a few baseball and softball games. But for the "I travel to every game, home and away" portion of my schedule, the end of the basketball season begins my offseason.

My wife an I have already booked a trip to go see the grandkids in Idaho in a few weeks. I'm going to join her on at least one and maybe two of her work trips. I no longer have to answer every one of her "are you free on the 19th next month?" questions with "I'll be in Minnesota covering a game."

So with the start of my offseason, I feel like now is a good time for a State Of The Union address. I attended all 13 football games in person and I was at 28 of the 35 basketball games (Tyler covered most of the others during crossover football/basketball season). Being there in person is invaluable when evaluating the health of a program (this might blow your mind but what you see on social media is often way off base), so I think I have a good read on Where We Stand at the moment. Let's talk about it.