I love my fake job. I love the “you know this isn’t your job, right?” looks that I get when I tell people I’m traveling to San Francisco to cover the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl. I love the fact that I have a job to support my blog habit. OK, and my wife and kids. And the dog. She eats SO MUCH. (The dog, people).

But every now and then, I need a break from all of this. I need to recharge. So, the month of May each year is my recharge month. There’s not much happening in the world of Illini (besides the ho-hum national title for yet another Illini golfer), so I take this time to think about other things. I golfed a couple times. Read an actual book. Solved a differential equation. Fed the dog.

So now that it’s June, it’s time to ramp up. And I mean ramp up. As in, I’m pretty sure there will be a new ALE post every single day from now until Christmas. How do I know this? Well, a few things.

1) Ninety Illini starts tomorrow. In 2009, I ranked the top 50 Illini players in five different posts. In 2010, I ranked 88 players from most important to least important. Last year, I pushed that to 89 (I couldn’t decide between two walkons who might find the field so I included them both). But all of those posts were “here’s the next 8 in my rankings”. This year, I’m gonna make it daily. Starting tomorrow, there are 90 days until our season opener with Western Michigan. So every day, from June 3rd to August 31st, I will put up a new post with the next guy. Trust me, June will be RIVETING as you wring your hands each morning, wondering if true freshman Joseph Spencer will rank ahead of backup longsnapper Richard Kersten. Well, at least it’s riveting to me.

2) The football season starts after that, and it runs right into the basketball season, and when those seasons are going on, I really can’t not put up a post every day. So I guess I’m saying there will probably be a new post every day from now until March. Hopefully late March.

3) Before the St. Louis Illini Caravan event last night, I got to interview both John Groce and Tim Beckman. Sat down for 20 minutes with each. Also got 10 minutes to chat with Mike Thomas. So I’m armed with recordings that could be 3 posts but will likely break into an 8 part series. So that’s coming up, starting next week.

How was it, you ask? Awesome. I think we’re in really, REALLY good hands. John Groce is so ridiculously impressive in person that I’m still buzzing from our sit-down. Beckman too. And Thomas.

A snippet, you ask? I asked Mike Thomas a casual question about the Directors Cup (the all-sports rankings for each college program) and Illinois’ current standing. Something like “you might finish pretty high in the Director’s cup this year”. His immediate response “we’re 19th. If things fall right, we could finish as high as 17th. And Illinois’ best finish ever was 20th.” This man is here to win.

I’m ready.