Tomfoolery afoot as Trojans try in vain to turn off the juice on Illini

With the Illini fired up and ready for the Rose Bowl, it would take something or someone catastrophic to take them off of their emotional high and break their focus.

Or at least a bad transformer.

Last night, unofficial reports have the Illini’s place of residence for the Rose Bowl losing power, roughly around 8:30.

While I wasn’t the first to suggest it, it has been said that the USC may have had something to do with it. Shenanigans such as these might be the mental edge that the Trojan’s need to help them this week against an Illini team that seems to be focused and relaxed.

With rumors and accusations flying around about USC’s attempt to ruin the Illini’s power supply, players have their tales to tell of the horrifying experience that was PowerGate 2008. (I know it’s still 2007, but that doesn’t rhyme nearly as well.)

“It really disrupted me, and kept (Drew McMahon) from sleeping,” said junior line backer Brit Miller. “The lights go out (McMahon is still sleeping) and I don’t want to wake him up. People started yelling outside, ‘Get in the chopper,’ like Arnold Schwarzenegger, just messing around. Then, this fire alarm starts going off, and for 10 minutes Drew doesn’t wake up. Then this little guy gets on the (hotel intercom) and says that it’s not a fire alarm, and Drew finally wakes up, and is furious. He took it to heart, he took it personal.”

Chris Norwell was flushed from his room in the fiasco and encountered some of the other hotel frequenters in trying to escape via the stairs from the muddled ordeal.

“A bunch of … people were running down the stairs,” senior defensive tackle Chris Norwell said. “They thought it was an earthquake or something.”

While speculation will be rampant until there is a definite culprit found, myself and some of the team will be tentative about whether or not USC was trying to find another home-field advantage.

“Like I was saying earlier, USC probably planned that,” senior safety Kevin Mitchell said.

UPDATE: Lineman enjoy racing on foot, talking trash.

In response to yesterday’s story of their epic foot race (Editor’s note: Click here to read about the race.), right tackle Akim Millington has fired back at All-American left guard Martin O’Donnell, calling yesterday’s contest a travashamockery.

“I think it was a scam, personally,” Millington said. “From what I’ve heard it was a photo-finish and I won, but the majority of the guys said it was tie just to make Martin feel better. I was going to show boat, give the thumbs up or a high step, but I turned back and saw him coming up, I picked my speed back up, but it ended up being a tie.”

The neutral monitor, left tackle Xavier Fulton, called the race a tie, among other things.

“It was a tie,” Fulton said told fightingillini.com. “It was the slowest race I’ve ever seen.”

The entire race is surrounded in controversy in and of itself, due to the last-second decision to change from a 40-yard format to a 20 yard. While some speculate that it is due to conditioning and fatigue, Millington has another theory.

“Martin couldn’t keep up in the 40, it would have been a wreck,” Millington said. “I guarantee victory in the 40, at least a 5.1 (seconds timing).

O’Donnell was given his fair chance to respond to the Millington remarks and was sure to make it known that Millington and his comments don’t have a leg to stand on.

“He says that he was turning around and tried to start show-boating,” O’Donnell said. “That’s an absolute lie. That and when he said he didn’t break stride or anything; He was running. He’s just trying to make excuses because I hawked (writers note: I don’t know that meant either) on him.”

Hearing Millington’s guarantee of victory in the hypothetical 40-yard dash, O’Donnell called shenanigans.

“He said he can take me, and he had me off the line but I was hawking him at the end,” O’Donnell said. “I just think that that would extend over the next 20 yards.”

The only way that these two titans of trotting will meet again in contest is in the Rose Bowl. If Illinois scores a long touchdown, look for Millington and O’Donnell to face off once again in a long-distance jaunt downfield. Both are already guaranteeing that he will beat the other to the end zone for the orgy of celebration.

“I’ll be there first,” Millington said.

“Me, I will be there first,” O’Donnell said. “He can look at the game film; I’m there faster than he is.”

Miller staves off ear damage, excruciating death as a Roman toddler, thanks to medicine.

Miller, who has had a perforated right eardrum since he was a child, was asked about his condition today at the Illini Media Day. Miller had surgery on the ear once and re-punctured the eardrum, but his mother didn’t want to have the surgery again. The junior told the story of an old high school teacher who now jokes at Miller’s expense about the advancement of medicine in his situation.

“One of my high school teachers taught a Roman history course,” Miller said. “He always talks about in ancient Rome if babies were sick when they were born, they would just leave them out in the wild. Later on, when I came back he was teaching the same lessons and would say, ‘You know what, if Brit Miller was born in ancient Rome, he would have been left out to die.’ I don’t know the moral of the story, but I thank God for modern medicine.”