Can't Wait For Saturday Never know who you might bump into at your favorite local restaurant or grocery store
· Yahoo Sports
Jun. 8—***
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A reminder to locals this week (and always): Be kind to strangers. Especially if you are within a few blocks of the Illinois campus.
If somebody asks for a restaurant rec, send them to your favorite place. Or if they need directions to a particular building, tell them to follow you as you lead the way.
Illinois football coach Bret Bielema — can he really be going into his sixth year? Seems like he just got here — will host camps this week.
The players will learn a lot while showing their abilities to the coaching staff.
Based on Bielema's history at Illinois and previous jobs, there will be some head-turners that suddenly find themselves with interest from the home-town school.
Bielema has made recruiting in-state players one of his top priorities while building the program into a winner. The 19 combined wins the past two seasons are the best ever in that span.
The goal at Illinois has always been "win consistently." Bielema has figured it out with room to grow.
The players and their families in town this week will notice a couple things when dealing with the coaching staff: 1. They listen and 2. They are interested in making the players better. That helps explain both the ability to bring back talented seniors and the recent steady flow of former Illinois players into the NFL. The pro teams like what the players are learning at Illinois.
To keep that pipeline open, Illinois needs to continue to bring talented players to the football facilities, the campus and the community. Hard to get a proper feel for it until you see it up close.
It is a community of people who came here for what they thought was a short time and ended up staying much longer. For me that is 38 years and counting.
When I came here all those many years ago, a string of people I didn't know made me feel immediately at home.
Not sure if anyone will have that kind of impact of visitors this week. But maybe.