Western Illinois University

Several famous sports figures have ties to our region. A two-time NBA Coach of the Year, an analyst with Sunday Night Football, and an NFL head coach that coached in the Super Bowl are just a few of the famous sports figures that went to college in the Tri-States...

The famous (or infamous) annual list of the best "party schools" in America is out. Western Illinois University in Macomb and The University of Missouri in Columbia are among the top 100 colleges known to have a good time.

It has been a long standing question of should college athlete be paid for what they do? This thought process has now led football players from Northwestern University to try to unionize.

With the forecast calling for 5 to 8 inches of snow, it is hard to think about playing baseball, but the season is either underway now (or will be shortly) for the area colleges. Obviously all of the local schools will be playing games in warmer southern locations to begin the season.

Former Quincy Notre Dame and current Nebraska senior place-kicker Pat Smith has been named the Big Ten Conference special teams player of the week, the conference announced today. Smith was honored after kicking the game-tying and game-winning field goals in Nebraska’s 23-20 overtime win at Penn State last Saturday.

In case you football fans haven’t noticed this area is blessed with some great kicking talent as evidenced by the fabulous seasons being put together by Pat Smith at Western Illinois University and Mat Sims at Northern Illinois University.  Pat is from Quincy and Mat is from Hannibal.

I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Illinois, Megan Ervin, at lunch time today.  She was the special guest of the Quincy Exchange Club. Megan won the Miss Quincy Pageant in March and then captured the Miss Illinois title in June beating out 27 other contestants.