Recent content by Buck Turgidson

1984 - at Miznoz. My friends and I had signed up for Block I and decided to take a big group on the road for the season opener. Our only loss, and it had the feel of 'not again'. There was a pretty good contingent of Illini fans, and I don't recall Missouri folks being obnoxious (strange...

1979 Northwestern. I was a freshman, my older brother was an NU grad. Both teams terrible. We sat way up in the East balcony. Did the same the next year, which was Mike White's first game. Those two seasons felt wayyyy different. Was in Block I for the Rose Bowl season. After the Michigan...

I ran out on the field for that TD. I was in Block I and had wandered down to the field gate at the north endzone. I chatted up the gentlemen manning it. He was wearing an 'I like Dike' pin, and I might've told him I was related to Dike Eddleman. I asked him if I could stand on the field...

Shawshank movie pop quiz... Whose poster was on the wall when Andy finally escapes? (Hint: she was married to the friend of a Loyalty member)

Small?

I started in 1979. My first semester was the last semester of age 18 legal drinking in Champaign - good time to be an Illini. I was in PAR so T-Birds was the first bar I went to (and continued to frequent for a few years). Won a team chugging contest there (it was more of a marathon than a...

I get the b12 - PAC12 talks for one reason. If USC and a few other of the top PAC schools leave for the B1G, the remaining PAC would merge with the remaining b12. It seems like a contingency for a worst case scenario for the PAC, and of course it makes the b12 a bit more relevant

B1G PACkage. Let's see the SEC top that!

Colorado would definitely add some eyeballs...and appropos of nothing, I was at the Colorado game in 1990. More of that would be nice

I think standing pat is a very real probability. But if USC has reached out (per the podcast NEIlliniFan posted), you have to listen. And if the PAC12 dominos then start to fall, we don't want to be caught reacting. We'll want to be out front to get the best package we can

Totally agree on the Delaney point. He was always a step ahead of the other conference commissioners. He was playing 3D chess while the others were playing Pong Having that kind of vision would have been valuable before UT and OU bolted...and moreso now that we're forced to react (or not)

If you suspend the thought that all teams' schedules need to be same in terms of in-pod / out-of-pod and allow for more regional scheduling (and, more importantly, more marquee matchups, e.g. USC-OSU), you can make this work and add to the value of the 'New B1G' in $ per school. As far as other...

I've been warming up to the idea of Pac12 adds since this weekend (the commenters at Frank the Tank's Slant are pretty creative). Not sure about the geographically-mixed 'pods' but the PAC schools mentioned fit the B1G in terms of tradition and research / academics. If you suspend the idea...

Flipping A&M would be a big win. Remember that one of the draws of A&M going to the SEC was to be the only SEC school in Texas - hence a recruiting advantage over the Big 12 schools. What if A&M were the only Texas School in the Big Ten - there is some advantage to that. The TV money in the...

Folks may want to look up Frank the Tank's Slant blog. He is very knowledgeable on conference realignment and has been writing about Big Ten targets for the last several years, especially when Jim Delaney was driving the bus. He put up an update today. As others have noted, football contracts...