#AskTCR: Illinois Newcomers, Planet Discoveries, and Joyrides of Destruction

If you want your question featured in the next #AskTCR, tweet us @Champaign_Room with the hashtag #AskTCR. Or just yell “VAINISI!” really loud and we’ll get to it eventually. Maybe.

So having never played a game in the Fallout series, I decided to spend the $20 it cost to get Fallout: New Vegas. The game starts with you being saved by this doctor in this random ass town in Nevada after you were shot. The town is then under attack from these gangster guys or something because this is a post-apocalyptic world and I guess that’s what people do.

Anyhow to fight back you are given dynamite from this one guy for the fight against the gangsters. You would think that dynamite would be a valuable resource, but this guy gives them to you just like that. I lit one stick and threw it, but it was a bad throw. I killed civilians along with some of the attackers. Both sides turned on me and killed me in a matter of 5 seconds. So yeah, it’s a fun time.

And thus concludes the great story of when I first died playing Fallout, but now to your questions.

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Yes, Steve you would think that, but having immovable offensive linemen would be awful. They couldn’t move and block downfield! And you couldn’t even run up the middle because they couldn’t move out of the way. All the defense would have to do is run around these slow planet linemen and get to the QB every play. It would be an unmitigated disaster.

Make that planet out of pure energy that is easy to mine/harvest/use for our post-modern western lives.

We will get into a lot more detail in the coming week for football previews so stay tuned to TCR. That being said, if we get a bowl bid out of this team Lovie Smith will be seeing his first pay raise at Illinois.

The last anyone has heard he was still trying to finish up some classes at his Junior College. He wasn’t able to enroll in February because of some issues in academics there, and Illinois is still waiting on him to finish his classes.

If he earns his degree, he can join the team in August when the Fall semester starts, but it will be doubtful he is featured much given the short time he would have spent with the team.

That is if he ever joins the team in the first place.

It’s great to see both of these guys finally back in the fold for the Illini. Dre Brown probably won’t make too much of an impact on the offense thanks to Kendrick Foster and Reggie Corbin, but if Illinois runs the ball as much as we’re expecting them to, he’ll get his share of opportunities.

Dudek could be a huge help for Illinois. As a possession receiver who can work the middle of the field well, he can play a key role in some of the new wrinkles Illinois may throw out with a mobile QB in Chayce Crouch.

That being said, coming off of two ACL surgeries, I’m not sure if Dudek will be as productive as he was in his great freshman year. It is tough to predict how someone can come back after not playing a game for two seasons.

For football Del’Shawn Phillips should get a lot of playing time as a juco transfer. The LB/Pass Rusher will be asked to fill a huge void on the Illinois defense after the unit lost almost every key linebacker and defensive linemen to the NFL or graduation. If he doesn’t play well, it could be a very long year for the Illinois defense.

Mark Alstork is going to make the biggest impact for the basketball team. The graduate transfer averaged 19 ppg at Wright State, and he will be starting for Illinois. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him lead the Illini in scoring.

How much of a mess does Mizzou have to be for their AD of only 14 months leaving to go to Baylor? Baylor, a school which is still under the cloud of the sexual assault scandals from their football team, and is still under NCAA investigation. Mack Rhoades decided he would rather deal with that than Mizzou.

Losing donors absolutely will hurt recruiting budgets, but most of the hurt will be felt by the olympic sports who really depend on donors to be able to properly fund recruiting trips. Mizzou may have to tighten the belt a little for football and men’s basketball, but they will not be affected nearly as much as the other sports.

Can I just pick the Iowa or Wisconsin offensive line? Because if I can, you obviously go with that.

But since you said player, I will be boring and go with the best offensive linemen in the Big Ten West, Beau Benzschawel of Wisconsin, because if Illinois can get average Big Ten production out of the offensive line, they could have a productive offense, at least by Illini standards.

Maybe? I think this squad may struggle with scoring, but if Underwood can get the team to play at the high pace he loves, they could be a really tough team to play. I would say no for now, but we still have not seen the team play one minute under their new head coach, so any prediction is a flip of a coin.

But a recruit commits and you don’t tell the NCAA and they don’t sign their NLI, they can’t play, so that is an impossible scenario.

Recruits for football will come everyone, just wait. Illinois always signs players later than most schools.

Recruiting classes for football cannot be properly judged after only one year. Lovie Smith has only coached the Illini for one season, and has only had a handful of players he and his staff have recruited see any game time.

It’s waaaaaaaaaaay to early to judge how they have been doing. This summer has not been great for recruiting so far, but if they can turn some of these low three star recruits into decent Big Ten quality starters, we will all forget about recruiting rankings in a few years.

The grade is incomplete for now.

Well the number one advantage is we won’t have to play another damn 11 am game for one week at least. Seriously, NCAA, just kick-off at 1 pm eastern, and Noon central. No sporting event should be played in the morning.

The game being nationally televised is a nice add on as well, but the huge disadvantage for the game being on Friday night is you cannot host recruits at the football game. Apparently, the Big Ten just forgot that high school recruits play football on Friday nights, or they really just don’t care.

I do see this as good for fans and really good for the students. Night games are the best, and I hope to see Block-I filled up for this matchup.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

ICYMI, the best story in the college athletics off-season has to be the former Mizzou employee driving his car onto the basketball court, and causing over $100k in damages. A part of me is impressed that he would even do this, but I’m even more shocked that he was able to just drive his car on the basketball court. Who left a door open big enough that you can drive a freaking car through it at 4 am?

First off, don’t do this. But if you must do this, don’t do it in your own car, especially if your own car is a Volkswagon Passat. You need something more nimble and fun to drive.

Take one of these.

These are fun as hell to drive, and much faster than they look. You will not have a bad time while causing mass destruction to your school’s basketball court. Best of all it comes with it’s own roll cage! You won’t have to slow down on the turns! Get one of these and do donuts until the cops show up.