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#AskTCR: Are You Ready To Rumble?

YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, WE HAVE ANSWERS. THOUGH NOT ALL ANSWERS MAY BE TO THE QUESTIONS YOU WERE ASKING.

By Apollo Forza

For the second week in a row you guys have sent in a ton of questions for #AskTCR, and although nearly half of them involve Tim Beckman and being fired into the sun, we're still thrilled to be getting so many questions. The more questions we get, the more options we have to choose from.

The more selecting we do, the better the Mailbag gets.

If you want to run the risk of not having your question selected for next week's Mailbag because it just wasn't good enough, here's how you go about running the risk of rejection.

There are two ways to ask The Champaign Room your questions. You can tweet them at us on Twitter using the hashtag #AskTCR -- it just makes it easier to keep track -- or you can email them to us at TheChampaignRoom@gmail.com. And if you've got a personal question and you're worried about your privacy, just tell us. Well change your name to Tom Crean when we publish it on the site. And remember, you can ask us ANYTHING. It doesn't have to be about Illinois or even sports.

Let's get to it.

This isn't the easiest question for me to answer because my only contact with Illini media has generally been on the internet. So I haven't been able to really size anybody up. However, I will do it to the best of my ability.

Now, before I get started, I'm not going to include myself in the fight because then it'd be too easy to answer. Me. I would win, and I want to make this sporting.

So first let's eliminate the guys who wouldn't win right away. I'm sorry, Loren Tate, Mark Tupper and Herb Gould, but you're out. This isn't a WWE Royal Rumble, this is a real-life Royal Rumble and real-life Royal Rumbles are a young person's game. However, I'd be thrilled if you stuck around and watched so you could write about the rest of it.

Does Will Leitch count as Illinois media? Actually, it doesn't matter, Will's not winning this fight anyway. He just wouldn't take the cheap shots you're going to need to take to win this.

I also know Rob McColley isn't winning because he's not even entering. He'd rather film the entire thing.

I actually think you and Tay could have an advantage for a while, because you'd know doubt be tag-teaming on everybody else. But then I think eventually the Rivals guys -- Doug Bucshon and Brad Sturdy -- would form their own tag team and while the four of you were going after each other Bob Asmussen, Marcus Jackson and Matt Daniels would all team up to try and knock you four out of the ring. Meanwhile Steve Greenberg will just be showing up to the ring because it's a long drive from Chicago, and traffic sucked.

Sitting ringside, not having entered the squared circle yet, would be Robert from A Lion Eye. He's blogging about this whole thing right now. And that's when things get interesting.

While this melee was going on, Taylor Rooks is just going to walk by and distract every single one of you. While doing this, Shannon Ryan will sneak up behind Robert and take him out with a steel chair over the head. His next post will be titled a Stream of Unconsciousness because he was out cold for ten minutes and has a severe concussion. The post will be unintelligible.

The eight of you guys in the ring will turn around at the sound of the steel chair crushing Robert's skull, and you will decide that you need to team up to stop Shannon.

It will not work, because Shannon is Irish, and you do not want to fight the Irish. All the martial arts you see in UFC? Those are no match for an angry Irish person. If it's an angry Irish woman, that's even worse.

Shannon will proceed to beat the ever living hell out of each one of you and emerge victorious without a single scratch.

I have no inside information to share, but I'm going to stay with the opinion that he ends up at Kansas. It's not because I don't think Illinois has a good chance, because from what I've heard, they most certainly do. It's just that it's much easier to not be disappointed if he does choose Kansas if you never actually expect him to come to Illinois anyway.

Not a chance in hell, no. And while it's easier to know this now than it was when you sent in the question, the answer has always been the same.

If Aaron Bailey is going to start a game for Illinois this season it won't be before we've been eliminated from a bowl game. And it might not even happen then. The only reason Bailey would start over Scheelhaase now is if Nate got hurt or he was just playing poorly. Well, he's not hurt and he's got the 26th ranked passing efficiency rating in the country. Nate isn't the problem, and putting Bailey in as your starter doesn't give you a better chance to win right now.

Also, if Nate did get benched, I get the feeling Reilly O'Toole would replace him. Not Aaron.

You a Cubs fan? That sounds like a question a Cubs fan would asked.

If Illinois football is cursed with anything it's a curse that keeps them from hiring the right coach. I mean, compare our run of basketball coaches to football coaches in the last 30 years.

Two-tweet question! My first recommendation would be Jaylon Tate, but I don't know if you want another #1 jersey. I just think he'd be a wise investment because he's going to be here the next four years, and I do think he's going to turn out to be a very valuable player for this team.

My second choice would be Nnanna Egwu's 32 or Rayvonte Rice's 24. Both may be too popular for your taste, but they just seem like the best choices given your criteria.

I don't, but I don't care. They're your ears. The only reason I don't is because I'm part of the generation that really took the whole piercing and tattoo thing to the next level, but while all that stuff began as a way for people to "rebel" and be "unique," there were so many damn people doing it that the only actual way to rebel and be unique was to not get pierced or inked.

So I'm the only true rebel here, bitch.

Links on their own, patties in my stack from Merry Ann's.

I don't watch NASCAR because cars driving around in a circle for four hours just tends to get boring for me, however, my dad is a huge NASCAR guy. In fact, my dad has been a big NASCAR guy for my entire life, which goes back to before NASCAR was even popular.

He's actually somewhat of a NASCAR Hipster, because the more popular the sport got, the angrier he became about it.

The only reason I'm telling you this is because I would watch a lot of races with my dad as a kid and he'd ask me who I thought was going to win the race. I'd pick whoever, and then he'd pick.

And his guy always won.

Time after time he'd pick the winner, and that guy would go on to win. I thought he was magic.

He wasn't magic, he was just literate. You see, while all NASCAR races are shown live on ESPN or whatever network these days, in the 80s they were usually shown on tape-delay. So he would already know who won the race before we even started watching it.

I did not figure this out until I was roughly 23 years old.

Oh, and to answer your question I'll just say Jimmie Johnson because he always wins, doesn't he? What a great sport. They drive around in circles and the same guy wins every time.

Exciting.

I've seen so many people in the media picking the Bulls or just against the Heat in general, and I want to say right now that the media is stupid.

Now, on the off chance that the Heat don't win the title this year, it's not going to be the Bulls taking it home either. Because in the playoffs all the Heat will have to do is have LeBron guard Derrick Rose, and when that happens the Bulls have no other way to score. They'll get a game or two like they always do, but that's it.

What are three things you would tell 18-year old you if you could go back in time? - bakes1412

The first thing I would do is tell 18-year old me every single Super Bowl, World Series, NBA, college football and college basketball champion of the next 15 years so he could bet on them each season.

The second thing I would tell me is to start listening to what all those teachers have been telling me for the last five years. Write. Write some more, and then write even more. Don't wait until your 25 to get going this time.

The third thing I would tell me is that those damn NASCAR races were tape delayed you fucking idiot.

Right now I'd take Justin Houston from Kansas City and just have him go kill whatever quarterback we're facing that week, because a good pass rush is the quickest way to fix a defense. Justin Houston would fix our pass rush right quick.

Leonardo Da Vinci. Everything.

I don't think so, no. The team has improved this year, you said so yourself in the question, and it's not like anybody had high expectations coming into the season. So the team has improved and it's playing to expectations. I'm not sure how that can qualify as a bigger failure.

Granted, it'd be nice to win a Big Ten game, but we've still got five Big Ten games left. We might just get one.

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Thanks for the questions! If you submitted a question that didn't get answered, don't worry, it's possible that I'm just saving it for the next mailbag. It's also possible the question sucked and you need to ask better questions next time. I guess you'll just have to wait to find out.

Follow The Champaign Room on Twitter at @Champaign_Room and Like us on Facebook. You can follow Tom Fornelli on Twitter at @TomFornelli.

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