Your first Illini FB game you attended in person

I think it was against Iowa in 94. We won and Simeon Rice gave me his gloves as he was walking off the field.

October 9, 1971 against a top 20 ranked OSU. Student section. Played a good first half but lost. Best part of that year was winning the last 5 games in a row and shutting out Iowa 31-0 in the final game of the season

1967 Illinois vs Purdue. I was 11 At the time. I remember it was extremely cold and I could barely feel my feet in the second half. Ha. Leroy Keyes ran all over the Illini, John Wright got lit up on an attempted catch, and Mike Phipps was the Purdue QB. I remember my Dad and his friends grumbling about Valek.

November 6, 2004 - Indiana at Illinois - Dad’s Day

I married into Illinois fandom. My entire wife’s side (except my wife) attended Illinois. My then future father-in-law bought all of the family tickets to the game. It was my first visit to campus, and we spent the morning walking around campus town and my in-laws were very excited to show me around. It was a great morning. But, we dragged our asses too long and wound up getting to the stadium late.

As we were getting there, there was a lot of cheering, and I was upset we missed the beginning of the game. It turned out it was a returned kickoff for a TD by Indiana, or a long passing play, or something where Indiana scored immediately, so I didn’t miss anything “good”, but I was frustrated that we showed up late and missed that excitement.

anyway, Indiana scored on their first four possessions, and Illinois looked like garbage. But I will always remember Illinois’ 4th quarter was awesome. We scored a TD with about a minute left, and got an interception to seal the deal. We won 26-22.

I had such a blast, when my wife and I got married that following July, we got season tickets for the 2006 season.. and haven’t missed a home game since.

The beginning of the 2005 season was interesting, too. We won the first games of the season. And the reason I bring that up is my home record for the first three home games of my Illini fandom was 3-0.

By the way, if you’re curious, I have never been late to another start of an Illinois football game.

I-L-L

Illini vs. Arizona State in Champaign, 1987

"The 15th-ranked Sun Devils wore down a spirited Illini defense in the second half here Saturday to post a 21-7 victory, their third straight over a Big 10 team. Arizona State beat Michigan in the 1987 Rose Bowl and beat Michigan State in their 1986 season opener."

I went to my first game in Memorial Stadium as a junior in high school with my dad to visit my brother who was a sophomore at Illinois. It was the fall of 1968, and Notre Dame absolutely poured it on to kill a hapless Illini team 58-8. That’s one of the reasons I hate Notre Dame. I fell in love with the Chief, the Illinois campus, and the Greek life (my brother was a Phi Psi) that day, and I never even applied anywhere else. I ended up trying out for and making the woman‘s basketball team my freshman year, but I tore all the ligaments in my ankle and was unable to finish the season. I bought season football and basketball tickets during new student week my freshman year and then the next three years as well. I met my future husband (whose dad was a very, very good Illini basketball player) at Second Chance our senior year; that meeting will be 50 years ago on September 25. My love for Illinois only grew. We again have season football tickets (after having them for 35 years, we gave them up 2019-2022 but still went to 3-4 games a year), and we get to as many basketball games as we can. I am officially a fanatic, and gosh, I’m old…

chiefini said:

I went to my first game in Memorial Stadium as a junior in high school with my dad to visit my brother who was a sophomore at Illinois. It was the fall of 1968, and Notre Dame absolutely poured it on to kill a hapless Illini team 58-8. That’s one of the reasons I hate Notre Dame. I fell in love with the Chief, the Illinois campus, and the Greek life (my brother was a Phi Psi) that day, and I never even applied anywhere else. I ended up trying out for and making the woman‘s basketball team my freshman year, but I tore all the ligaments in my ankle and was unable to finish the season. I bought season football and basketball tickets during new student week my freshman year and then the next three years as well. I met my future husband (whose dad was a very, very good Illini basketball player) at Second Chance our senior year; that meeting will be 50 years ago on September 25. My love for Illinois only grew. We again have season football tickets (after having them for 35 years, we gave them up 2019-2022 but still went to 3-4 games a year), and we get to as many basketball games as we can. I am officially a fanatic, and gosh, I’m old…

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I am evidently the same age as you are and instead of " old " , I prefer " seasoned ".....It connotes a modicum of intelligence and maturity , which I rarely exhibit but keep trying to find daily........



Old Age , the final frontier of life....................Seasoned , living in the moment..........We all decide our own pace daily....
Color me excited to get a new chance every new day to improve my legacy.........I really really am........................

My first Illini Football game was at Memorial Stadium on November 5, 1977. It was a beautiful early November day and our Beloved got soundly owned and shut out by Woody Hayes' Ohio State Buckeyes 35 to zip. It was Gary Moeller's first year as head coach of our Beloved. The sting of the Hayes led beat down didn't last long as we partied hard at Chances R that evening after the game!

My first game was NIU in 1992. My bro went there so we decided to go to the game. He cheered his heart out, bless his heart, but the huskies didn't have enough to overtake the Illini that day.

My second game was Arizona, 1993. I don't remember much of the game, but I was excited at halftime for the band and getting concessions. We sat in the east stands, lower level, just beside the horseshoe. I'm pretty sure IL lost that game, but it was competitive. My memory is more fuzzy than I thought - it wasn't that long ago (though I was just a kid).

My first game was September 20, 1986 against Nebraska. We got throttled 59-14, but as I recall, that was the game they retired Dick Butkus' #50.

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 game, I was holding on to one of the uprights as the South goalpost went down. Amazingly, I was not injured

I saw the Illini play OSU in Ohio Stadium as an 8-year-old in '74 (lost 49-7) and 10-year-old in '76 (lost 42-10).

I stopped going to OSU games for the most part after 1979, which meant that I missed the historic Dave Wilson 621-passing-yards (49-42) loss in 1980 in Columbus. I read that the OSU fans gave the Illini a standing ovation as they left the field at the end of the game. They'd never seen anything like that kind of passing performance.

The first game I saw in Memorial Stadium was my freshman year, 1984, on a crystal-clear early November day. Sat in the west balcony around the 20 with my roommate watching the Illini crush Minnesota 48-3. Chilly, windy day in the upper 40s. Remember little about the game itself except that the Illini dominated and the sun felt good sitting in that wind.

My one and only Illini FB game was a home game when I was a sophomore in HS......So that would have been 1966 or 67......it was against the dreaded scUM and best I can remember was scUM was rated and the Illini weren't but the Illini had a lead until a scUM player returned a punt for TD and the gates opened up for them .............All this is still hazy as I was medded up even back then and our FB team was there and our seats were like 2 rows from the top of the stadium looking down on the end zone ......I was wide eyed and already a die hard Illini fan ........The rest of the FB team was up there to just have fun , but I lived and died on every play.....
I hadn't thought about this much over the years and so the clouds have covered a lot of that day , but I still remember how cold it was .................North Pole cold..............................It really really was..............................

November 4, 1978 - I was a freshman, and my HS sweetheart visited me on campus. We went to the game on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Michigan State was nationally ranked, and the Illini had an odd record of 1-5-2. I remember the Illini scored on first possession, but missed the XP. MSU fumbled the ensuing kickoff and the Illini recovered near their goal line. Scored again, but the 2 point try failed. We were up 12-0 and everyone was fired up. Unfortunately MSU then took over and the final score was 59-19. I loved the stadium and the whole experience. I was a naive small-town kid, and I’ll admit I was surprised when the Marching Illini played “my high school’s school song”- until that moment, I never knew my HS copied the U of I school song.