Where I Come From: Why I am an Illini Fan

(Part 1 of a large SBN College wide series on who bloggers are and why they do what they do, sponsored by EA Sports.This post is sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.)

It probably isn't too surprising that I ended up an Illini fan; my grandfather went to school in Champaign after World War II, attending the University on the GI Bill along with Robert Novak and Hugh Hefner (proving that college is a gateway to any number of destinations in life). But rather than embroiling himself in a political scandal or founding an empire of naked ladies and fiction by Bernard Malamud, Papa Kutsunis became an accountant in Rock Island, Illinois, and passed the hereditary condition of Illini fan-dom to his children and his children's children.

My grandfather saw the Illini go to the Rose Bowl three times and the Sugar Bowl once: four BCS caliber bowl games in 50 years of being a fan. At 23 years old I have seen two, which leads me to believe the next 57 years of Illini football will go about as well as the last 60.

I have wanted nothing more than to go to the U of I like my grandfather since I was a little kid, and even though I treated high school less than seriously, I eventually managed to transfer into Illinois in 2007. I joined the Block I and watched the Illini somehow blaze through the Big Ten all the way to the Rose Bowl. But the rest is not history, because it takes more than just one good season for an otherwise emotionally balanced young man to devote so much time to a team like the Illini. And that 'more' just might literally be brain damage.

On October 12th, 2007, my girlfriend and I set out to have an enjoyable night at the bars on Green Street. At some time very early in the morning on October 13th, I awoke in a hospital with an IV in my arm. Apparently some combination of Brother's gin and tonics and the absence of safety rails on my lofted bed resulted in me colliding, face-first, with my tiled dorm room floor. When 11am finally rolled around, I was sick to my stomach with a vile mix of hangover and concussion-induced nausea (I'm sure the elder George Kutsunis would have been proud). And then I watched the Illini play Iowa. It was a game that very much reflected my physical condition, and when both Iowa scores came off of second chances from penalties, my concussion-induced nausea was replaced with Illini-induced nausea.

At the end of the game I had no outlet for my opinions and emotions concerning that game, no forum to detail where I thought the coaches had gone wrong, no channel for my concussed, medication-addled brain to rant about the terrible officiating. I was sprawled on a bean bag chair in my room in Sherman Hall with 12 stitches and a (very angry) girlfriend who had recently dialed 911 on my account, and all I wanted to do was talk about pulling Juice in favor of Eddie. I am an Illini fan, and that is where I come from.