I remember Illini games were on WCIA; All games IIRC. Never missing the first few minutes of important games because the earlier games went OT. Hometown broadcast.
I was thinking of this too. A good game from Payne would do wonders for us in this matchup.
And the baseball cards (Topps) came with that hard stick of bubble gum. I liked it that the cards always had that bubble-gum smell. I used to look for coins that people had dropped under the copy machine at the drug store. Then I would use the money I found to buy baseball cards. My mom was not happy with me crawling under the copy machine.
Just to pile on, in early/mid-'70s it was Saturday afternoon/evening and Monday evening for BT games. Then they went to Thurs/Sat IIRC late '70s.
I used to collect pop bottles to turn in for my BB cards .........got 2 cents a bottle at the local grocery store....the owner knew I bought BB cards so he always gave me an extra pack when he settled up with me ........many times i would leave his store with 8-10 packs and when i got them all opened i would chew the bubble gum and blow the biggest bubbles around ........fun times
Way off-topic, I know, but this is what I remember most: NBC Game-of-the-Week theme music from the mid'-70s:
Played Little league baseball in late 50's....I always tried to get 3-4 cards of the same player if I could....that way when I went to one of my games...either before or after the game I would trade those cards for players cards I didn't have....if it was a good player I wanted bad enough I'd maybe swamp 2-3 cards for one....the best of times
Yep, Race is the one that concerns me. He is a match up issue due to his size for DMW and Jacob. I wish Hawkins would step up, play more physical without fouling, limit mistakes, and just play like we all know he is capable of.
And Freshman did not play. Most players stayed 4 years. Not many if any red shirts.
The thing with BBV is his foot speed limits very much what he can do. In isolation, he may be able to nail an outside shot. But in game time, moving with or without the ball to get in position for a 3-pt shot is problematic. That's why his best position now is as a 5 near the basket. He just doesn't have the mobility to do much else.
There's a great old SI article about freshman football players from Fall '72, which was the first time they were eligible to play:
vault.si.com
I am not saying in every game. I don't see Thompson as some fast athlete and Ben not being to slow down or unable to match up with. Thompson in the post against our other 4s seeing many minutes he will certainly cause miss matches with his size and strength. We have seen it before with teams with 2 guys like him or even better than him.
Bonus was a stick of gum in Tops if I remember right. We would walk half a mile to the convenience store to buy cards every day, sometimes several trips. I grew up a 30-minute drive from Busch Stadium. We played baseball all day, I would leave the house after breakfast and Mom would say "be back for dinner". Julian Javier (great player, underrated) visited a friend of his that lived down the street one year, and his son was a Celebrity for quite a while. I remember the 1963 All Star game had an all Cardinal starting infield.... Javier. Boyer, Groat, and White (another underrated player imho).
Haha, I remember doing the same thing. I started mowing lawns when I was 7 or 8 to earn extra coin. The snow shovel was also great for making some money in the off-season.
There's a great old SI article about freshman football players from Fall '72, which was the first time they were eligible to play:
October 30, 1972
It was a substantial change in the game.
lol.......At 8 yrs old i started working after school at the department store where my mom was the assistant manager...........I made 25 cents a day working till closing time which was 2-3 hours a day , taking out the trash and washing the front windows and sweeping the floor.............Earned every penny I made as my mom was probably the hardest taskmaster I ever worked for.......She told me years later that I was a good worker and she worked me hard to know what it took later in life to succeed...........
That '72 A's Series win was one of the first I could recall as a kid. Those old SIs are marvelous. Such writing, and, yes, the ads from that era are worth their weight in gold.
I never kiss and tell.....................
