You never know what you'll fall into when you hustle.

I planned a trip to cover the Rutgers basketball game tomorrow and the Penn State basketball game on Wednesday. Then, we add a football game at Penn State the day before. Don't mind if I do.

Then we hire a coach on Saturday morning. I'm somewhere between Indianapolis and the Ohio border when I see the email come across my phone: Illini hire Bret Bielema. My phone starts blowing up, but I'm driving, so I pull off at some exit to get a Diet Mountain Dew. I flip through my phone. I see that Bret Bielema is driving to the Penn State game from New York. Wait, but that would mean...

• I'm the only Illini media member covering the Penn State game.
• The new head coach will be at the Penn State game.
• I might be able to get the first interview with the new Illini head coach.

That interview is posted below. First, one of those thank-you paragraphs.

I'll be in a hotel the next five nights. I rented a car for this trip. I'll be eating food. And all of this is possible because you said "Robert, I'm in" at some point in the last 93 days and purchased a subscription. This is not just me "hustling" or whatever. This is you paying for me to hustle. That's how this whole thing works. You say "Robert, I want some content" and you slap down your money and then I go out and provide some content. So thank you. This interview is the byproduct of your support.

OK, impressions:

1. He's very personable. Maybe personable isn't the right word. He's very... inviting? Maybe it's the deep voice. But he puts you at ease. I was very surprised by this. Not sure why - maybe it's my Arkansas coworker at the old job who told me story after story about how he was "aloof". But he's quite warm.
2. The deep voice was the other surprise. I'll tell another old-job story. I worked on a development project that had a Kohl's. When presenting to the planning and zoning board, Kohl's sent a guy to talk about why they excited to join the {city name} community. In the pre-meeting with the architect, the architect gave him the "and you are..." and he said "I'm the guy from Kohl's with the deep voice and planning and zoning boards love guys with deep voices. It reassures them." That's kind of how I felt when speaking mask-to-mask. He has a deep, reassuring (?) voice.
3. He likes to talk. We finished the interview and headed for the elevator. He asked me about 6 questions during the walk and the elevator ride. I am the W O R S T person to do that to because by the time we reached the 4th floor and he headed to the AD's suite, I was halfway through why I moved to Champaign in April. I wish I was kidding.
4. I asked really bad questions (I'll be mad at myself for a month but I can't stop my brain at times like that). But he did really good at bringing the answers around to what I was getting at. So that was nice.
5. I tried to put my brain in the mind of my Arkansas coworker as we chatted. Meaning, this is all new and hopeful right now, but when this goes south - and Illinois football goes south more than Canadian geese - will this be grating? I could see how my Arkansas coworker could get wrapped up in his long-answer ways in a frustrating "get to the point" way. But this is the honeymoon, so we don't have to worry about his foibles yet. (Also, I didn't get that impression. Maybe my Arkansas coworker was just angry about Petrino's accident the tumble under John L. Smith.)

Let's just get to the interview, shall we? My chat with the new Illini coach: