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I've never been there for a game, but have attended a few events over the years. Perhaps the most helpful (if not obvious) thing I would say is that The University of Illinois is in Champaign, downstate and nowhere near Chicago. The population of the "metro" is only 200,000. This means that you should book hotels early because they don't have the inventory like Chicago (for which Northwestern that can host a home game and hardly make a dent on the local hotel availability). Fortunately, they have little hope for their football team, so that should keep after-market ticket prices low.

No announcements yet on the field for the 2019 Outdoor T & F Championships, but the odds are that Noah Williams (400), Curtis Richardson and Nuh Andu (High Jump), Jordan Latimer (Long Jump), Matt Ludwig and possibly Cole Wigal and Matt Keim (Pole Vault), Patrick Kimball (110H Hurdles)Hesham Eldesouky (Triple Jump) and Ian Behm (Javelin) will get regional berths in Florida. On the Women's side it looks like Mackenzie Andrews (1500 maybe and Steeplechase for sure), Dara Perry (100H Hurdles), Lucy Bryan (Pole Vault), and Abby Wilson (discus and maybe shot) should be in as well. Those totals will all be more than the rest of the MAC sends in total. Go Zips!

Are you ever off the phone? I'm starting to think you're a player agent or something!

I feel it was done in an effort to draw more interest to the non-revenue sports. It was a good idea, but really hasn't achieved what it was set out to do. Most fans still really only get excited about the football and men's basketball match-ups (particularly when they meet in Cleveland), which is no different than before.

On the bright side, 50% of the new system will be better than 100% of Milwee's

And still learning new systems.

I wish we were playing this Illinois team in year 3 or 4 of Arth's tenure. We're facing an Illinois team while they're down, but they're also facing an Akron team that will be pretty depleted as well.