National attention for Illinois football? What a time to be alive!
Lovie Smith will appear live on Sportscenter at 9:40am Wednesday morning from Memorial Stadium. It's doubtful he'll make any headlines with his comments, but seeing the Orange and Blue on ESPN always proves to be fairly exciting.After announcing a few weeks ago that he was cutting his list in the next 2 weeks, he just announced on Twitter that "list coming out tonight." Fingers crossed.
I'm not quite sure who No. 21 in White is, but Da'Monte Williams put that dude on a damn poster.
Thanks for playing, No. 21.Every year, SB Nation's Bill Connelly writes tremendous season previews for all 128 Division-I football teams. Well -- you guessed it -- his take on the 2016 Fighting Illini was finally published this morning.
That will 100% be the best Illinois preview you read all Summer; it puts each position group under the microscope while highlighting overall strengths and weaknesses.But if you're lazy and don't want to read, Connelly also includes a nice TL;DR read section. Yes, that includes a season projection. The preview will be pinned to our front page for the rest of the day, and you can also access it by clicking the link in the above tweet.Jeremiah Tilmon's commitment has provided a lot of great Internet #content today, but this short Twitter video may be my favorite thing.
John Groce has spent years trying to land a player of Tilmon's caliber, and it's great to see all that hard work finally pay off. Congrats, Coach! Now let's win some games.Gophers aren't very interested in Juawan Treadwell, and he'll likely play for Illinois.
The Cincinnati Bengals have signed former Illinois defensive back Clayton Fejedelem to a rookie contract. Fejedelem was the Bengals' 7th round selection in last weekend's NFL Draft.
The terms of the agreement are unknown, but Fej will likely be earning the rookie minimum (about $450,000) this season.If you're a fan of Illinois football, you absolutely need to read Bleacher Report's latest piece on the program. Adam Kramer was in Champaign last weekend for the open practice, and he got some nice quotes from Lovie Smith, Josh Whitman, Jeff George.
Brian Urlacher also had the following to say: "My son is 10 now. If [Lovie Smith] is still there and he recruits my son, guess what he's doing? He's going to Illinois."SB Nation's latest NFL mock draft has former Illinois defensive lineman Jihad Ward going to the Houston Texans (2nd Round, Pick No. 52).
You can click the link in the above tweet to view their predictions for the first three rounds of the draft.The weather was horrible in Champaign on Wednesday morning. But it wasn't all bad! Once the rain subsided, Kyle Prentice (a QB manager for the football team, per his Twitter account) captured this amazing image of Memorial Stadium.
Lovie Smith is totally at the end of that rainbow, you guys.