This post is sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011

When you go to a particular school or grow up around college football, you are more than just a fan. It’s who you are. We thought we could leverage this pride in your roots and show that "where you come from" is more than just a statement about geography. By positioning NCAA Football 11 as a game that understands this pride and is authentic to these traditions, the takeaway should be that anything that is in college football is in NCAA Football 11.

And this doesn’t just include game play (though that’s a huge part of it). It’s rivals and mascots; it’s legends and stories. It’s those things that are at the very fabric of the game itself. Of course the game is great this year as well. With authentic entrances, mascots and specific offenses for each team, the term "where I come from" takes on a much larger meaning. While playing NCAA Football 11 is ultimately a great sports sim, it should also give you a sense of the pride and emotion one has for being a fan of a team they will never not be a part of.

(This post sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 11)

While this is not my formal prediction for the Illini season ahead, it is a taste. I do not at this moment have everything I need to come to a real conclusion about the season before us. I swing back and forth, I'll read the preview magazines, read Phil Steele, wondering if he is hitting the adderall especially hard when he predicts the future for the Illini, and then read him over and over again. At the very least, there are some things we have to feel both good and bad about coming into this season. First, the bad.

1. RS Freshman quarterback, backed up by a true freshmen, with the player with the most snaps under his belt running receiver routes.  As stables of quarterbacks go, I would say the situation at Illinois is sub optimum. Teams are very reliant on how well their QB handles pressure and noise, and the first true road test that Nathan Scheelhaase will have is in front of 100,000 plus in Happy Valley. If he gets hurt, or turns out to be no good, then we have to either reconvert Eddie McGee to QB or have a true Freshman in Chandler Whitmer come in. Yikes.
2. The defense is still up in the air, it was a team that gave up yards on the ground and through the air pretty routinely last season, and has only lost pieces, in Josh Brent and Donsay Hardeman although with the inconsistency we saw last year, turnover might not be entirely a bad thing.
3. The schedule looks fairly daunting  as we look at it in July, with Mizzou, Ohio State  Penn State and Michigan State looking like for sure losses. In order to make a bowl the Illini will have to sweep their non OSU home sched and then steal a win from Northwestern or Fresno St, a scenario which has the Illini beat fully four teams they lost to in 2009

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(This Post Sponsored By EA Sports NCAA Football 2011)

There have been plenty of memorable moments in the last decade or so of Illini football, from the pantsing of Virginia in the MicronPC.com bowl to Terry Hawthorne becoming the last great hope for the future when he ran down Roy Roundtree and saved some semblance of pride for the Illini in 2009.

For the purposes of this post at least we will be using the memorable moments that conveniently available via Youtube.

Let us think again to that moment last season. Terry Hawthorne, moved from wide receiver to his "other" position in high school, defensive back. The Illini sat at 6 losses, one away from being formally eliminated from the post season, Michigan at 5 wins, one win away from securing Rich Rod's first bowl in Ann Arbor.  Michigan Receiver Roy Roundtree seemed to be on his way to an easy score to put the Wolverines ahead by two scores and possibly the game out of reach even in the third quarter. Then Terry Hawthorne pulled a Terry Hawthorne.

The Wolverines would not score again, and the Illini rolled off 21 straight points in the quarter. Michigan did not win another game, the Illini, well, lost to Northwestern, Fresno and Cincinnati.

All things being equal, suffering at Michigan is pretty nice too.

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This post is sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011

No, not the most glamourous choice for my favorite football player, but I am personally limiting the options to players I have seen in person so that kind of eliminates  the likes of Dick Butkus, Jeff George, or Simeon Rice. No I chose Jason for fairly simple reason.

1. He was extremely good at kicking field goals.

2. He is a fellow Quad Citian (Represent)

3. We really haven't had a good field goal kicker since.

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This post is sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011

Football is an event. A once a week opportunity to set aside the rest of the world and completely indulge the excesses of food, drink and sport. football is a true all day activity, from waking up at the crack of dawn to drive to your parking spot, to waiting around an extra hour our two with the grill after the game. The weather can range from Eastern Illinois hot, to Fresno State cold, but the traditions of the tailgater must be upheld.

For me, there are several ingredients that are necessary for me as a fan to prepare for an Illini home game. (I absolutely do not drink if I am going to be in the press-box...obviously) Food, drink, entertainment and transportation and good company are indispensable when one wants to truly enjoy their time before the Illini game. If done correctly it won't matter if you are in Lot 42 with the RV crowd and party tents, or  Lot E27, next to the Oak Street long term Book Storage facility, you will still have an great gameday.

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This post is sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

Shocker! My favorite Illini team is the only one to have made a bowl in the last five years and also the team that inspired me to pick up blogging!

The term catching lightning lightning in a bottle may never be more appropriate than in the case of the 2007 Fighting Illini. Many of the players on that team had the best personal seasons they ever would in the Orange and Blue, whether it was all star freshmen or grizzled sixth year seniors. Everything just came together so beautifully. The spread option offense actually worked, and really well. The defense while prone to give up plenty of yards seemed to always come through in the end with a huge turnover.

The amount of personality and talent on that team boggles my mind looking back, for a school that has produced relatively few NFL players over the previous decade, seven players from that roster were drafted, and that doesn't even include incredibly important players like J Leman, Brit Miller or Juice Williams who were undrafted free agents.

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(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.

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