When this runs, the Rose Bowl will be about 10 days old, but still fresh in all of our memories. I have a feeling that most everyone’s pride and ego, football player or not, will still be severely bruised.

In not so many words, the Illini were given a beat down by the Trojans. I’m not going to try to overanalyze what happened, or makes excuses for an offense that couldn’t find its stride, or a defense that was forced to spend way too much time on the field and couldn’t pick up on the Trojan’s passing attack.

This was one of the first games that I think I felt the emotions of the fan, a writer and the team all at the same time.

I typed most of this from the press box at the Rose Bowl in an utterly and completely empty stadium. Sitting in the press box at a field that was just housing roughly 93,000 people is a very surreal experience. The field that had just been loud and deafening now witnesses that noise completely silenced. As cliché as it is to say, that was the first time I have heard a “deafening silence.”

For those in the stands and those on the sidelines, there was a swing of emotion that is hard to explain.

There was a palpable energy that writers like myself can only transcribe into clichés as we try, in vain, to describe the start to the game.

That sheer anticipation of the crowd was given a quick deadening by the Trojans’ first touchdown, and even more by their subsequent scores.

But, when Rashard Mendenhall burned down the Illinois sideline for his 79-yard score, the emotion was back from the beginning of the game.

Fast-forward to Juice hitting him for an eight-yard dump off that turned into a 55-yard pass, a moment that gave me goose bumps like I hadn’t felt before. When Jacob Willis caught that pass, what seemed like inches from the end zone, I thought for sure that the game was going to completely shift.

Illinois might not have won the game, but things could have been so much different than what happened in the end.

I could feel those uppity Southern Californians shift in their seats when Willis made that catch, and heard the murmurs that they might have underestimated these Midwestern boys just a bit.

But, Willis’ catch was dislodged, and the rest is a painful, angry, rage-filled, use whichever adjective you please, memory.

We’re told not to cheer or be emotional in the press box, but as a fan sitting in the press box, it was easy to see mistakes and to second guess the players and coaches. It took a lot of energy to not stand up and scream onto the field at the offense and defense as both sides of the ball struggled.

Although I did a good enough job that I didn’t get thrown out of the press box, the suppression of my anger as a fan – coupled with some of the USC media (who were being a wee bit condescending about the game and the matchup) – was a tough pill to swallow.

For me, it was one of those games that until you could hear and feel the stadium noise, you would have had a hard time believing.

I had never been so invested in a sporting event that I wasn’t a part of. I had already decided to go to Illinois when they played North Carolina in the NCAA Final and saw the loss on TV, but there is no comparison of watching the Illini fall from my living room as there was from watching it at the game.

When we made it down to the locker room, there was no token celebration of their great season among the Illinois players, and smiles were a rare sight.

The cracking of lips was mostly at jokes between players and those who were trying to make the best of the situation.

Other than that, positive emotion is a ghost for this team that has gone through their fair share of ups and downs throughout their careers.

For those who have ever been a part of a sport for as long as most of those players were, the feeling of defeat the Illini experienced, specifically the seniors, was something that identified the players. For them to recover from two horrendous years that would have crippled most programs and go to the Rose Bowl is extremely impressive, to say the least.

For them to fall in the fashion that they did, likely brought back so much of the negativity that they had dispelled in the past few years.

Seeing J Leman and Justin Harrison’s embrace after the game would choke up any Illini fan, and I don’t think I will ever be able to completely describe it in words.

For as much as people say that college sports are more “pure” for being unpaid and amateur, I don’t think that the point was ever more evident to me until I saw those players after the game.

It’s always a little strange for people to see athletes, specifically these massive football players, so emotional.

But when you consider how much these players had invested in this game, it was fairly easy to understand why.

Daniel Johnson is a junior in Communications. He can be reached at [email protected].