The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871

The Daily Illini

The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871

The Daily Illini

The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871

The Daily Illini

The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871

The Daily Illini

The scoop on Baylor — from a former Bear

The distance from FAR to the Quad is .8 miles, an excruciating 15-minute walk if you ask Joe Welcome Week. The distance to the Quad from Alexander Hall, my freshman dorm, is 926 miles.

Needless to say, “The Alex” doesn’t rest on the streets of Champaign, Urbana or Savoy. Try Waco, Texas, on the campus of Baylor University, where I spent my first two semesters of college. I guess you can say the Fantasy Doctor knows no borders.

No, I wasn’t planted here at U of I by an expansion-paranoid Big 12 task force. I have lived in Big Ten country for 20 of 21 years of my life. But I can tell you that I racked up way too many Golden Bear Rewards Points (think frequent flyer miles for student attendance) in my time in Waco not to maintain a special place in my heart for the Green and Gold.

Let me say that while this game may be a small step for Zook and Co. on their way back from Rose Bowl hangover, it means a heck of a lot more to the suffering Baylor fan base. Pejorative cheap shot, this is not.

Allow me to explain.

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The year 2010 was a year of celebration at Baylor, for many reasons. Call it a renaissance, a rebirth or just the product of countless hours of underpublicized work. Whatever it is, it’s a stamp of validation and a victory a long time coming.

Take one walk around the campus at Baylor and it’s hard not to notice all the commotion on the previously barren north end of campus, home now to a sparkling new athletics administration building, indoor football practice facility and new additions to several currently existing facilities.

For a university that prides itself on a commitment to Christian values, these facilities and their tenants have served as the culmination of years of faith that could resuscitate a proud yet struggling athletic department that Mike Singletary and Michael Johnson once called home.

Faith that a school far below Big 12 standards in athletic curb appeal could muster the administrative support to get recruits on campus, and it did.

Faith that a clean-cut Hoosier from the Mid-Continent Conference could raise the basketball program out of the shadow of Texas and Texas A&M;, which Scott Drew did, reaching the Elite 8 for the first time since 1950 in front of a partisan Houston crowd.

Faith that head coach Kim Mulkey could guide the red-hot Lady Bear basketball team back to the Final Four after an anxious five-year absence, which she did.

Faith that for the first time in 16 years, the Baylor football program would be celebrating a bowl bid come November and not picking up the pieces of an eight-loss season, which they did under third-year coach Art Briles.

And perhaps most importantly, faith that, once and for all, the national media can move past the 2003 basketball program and 1993 Branch Davidian tragedies, two wounds in Waco that have long since healed but that nevertheless get brought up time and again to the vexation of students and faculty.

But the point is — and this is the great celebration — that none of that matters now. The pain is long past, the losing is long over, and the positive energy on campus has been palpable as the Bears prepare for the Texas Bowl, the crowning moment of their year-long rebirth.

Gordon Voit is a junior in LAS. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @G_Voit.

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