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The Iowa Hawkeyes travelled to Champaign Saturday to challenge the Fighting Illini of Illinois. After building up a lead over the first three quarters, the Illini held off a late Iowa comeback to win 27-24. Most of the McDonald clan were in town for the game. I had some Quad Cities friends in town as well, and Nathan organized a surprise when he showed up with Raff, Adam K., Adam's girlfriend Sara, and Pritch.

See the gallery for more pictures from the day.

Kelsey and I drove down to Champaign Saturday morning, arriving at our family's tailgate location around 10:30. Griffen was already there, so we decided to drop off my cooler and head to lot K, where Emily, Mike, Tom, and their friends were already preparing for the game. Not wanting to leave Griffen alone, and knowing that Tom was on his way, we decided to make Bloody Mary's for the walk to the other tailgate.

Shortly thereafter, Tom, Nathan, and Raff pulled in. I had talked to Nate earlier in the week and he told me not to worry about trying to find him a ticket, because he wouldn't be able to make it. (I even mentioned this to Grandma Betty Lou, who apparently was also in on the plan!) What a great surprise to see these guys. As I recognized their cars, I turned to Kelsey and said, "Oh boy, this weekend just turned into a debacle!"

Nathan, Tom, and Raff needed to go shower, and Adam wasn't in town yet, so Kelsey and I walked over to lot K. About 15 minutes later we found our friends. Kelsey and I were quickly destroyed in a game of bags, and then an epic game of flippy cup kicked off. Finally, after being paged a number of times, I headed back to the family tailgate.

By this time, it was about 12:30pm and tailgating was in full swing. We had a great turnout:

• Dick & Pam
• Kevin & Susan
• Dennis & Pat
• Mom, me, Tom, & Katie
• Dick, Teresa, Bridget, Griffin, Reilly, Malorey, Delaney, & Haley 
• Todd, Margie, Jack, Sean, Danny, & Rosemary
• Bobby

In addition to the family, as I mentioned, Nathan, Raff, Adam, Sara, and Pritch were there, along with fellow fraternity brothers Terry, Matt (along with his girlfriend and dad), Luke, Kelby and his parents, and probably a few others I'm forgetting.

Eventually game time rolled around, and we made our way into the stadium. We had great seats, sitting in rows 2-4 on line with the south end-zone. Technically, we were in the Iowa section, but we represented the orange and blue quite well. (My voice was shot the next day, since I was leading the I-L-L I-N-I chant for most of the game.) Since it was about 70°, we were able to convince Kelsey to wear an Illini shirt, so I bought one from a vendor at the game.

The first three quarters went fairly smoothly for the Illini, but Iowa scored 15 points in the fourth to tie the game at 24 with about 2:40 left. We put together a solid drive and kicked a field goal with about 30 seconds left to win the game. (We should never have called timeout at that point. Here's the situation: fourth and six, clock running, within field goal range. We called timeout with at least 25 seconds left on the play clock. Instead, we should have stayed in our huddle until 1-2 seconds left on the relevant clock, and only then called timeout. That would have killed the clock and allowed us to avoid kicking the ball back to Iowa, giving them no chance to win the game.)

After the game, we continued tailgating, celebrating the Illini win.  I'm very pleased that I got to see everyone, and had a blast! I was totally surprised about my fellow fraternity alumni being in town, and very pleased that they pulled it off.  I'm pretty sure the Quad Cities crew had a good time in town, and I loved seeing everyone in the family!  All in all, a great weekend—albeit one I need a couple days from which to recover.