{"id":43153,"date":"2021-03-19T20:09:25","date_gmt":"2021-03-20T03:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=43153"},"modified":"2021-03-19T20:09:25","modified_gmt":"2021-03-20T03:09:25","slug":"blaming-it-on-march-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2021\/03\/19\/blaming-it-on-march-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaming It on &#8220;March Madness&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a U of Illinois alum, I have to admit that (sadly) it&#8217;s not all that common for my Fighting Illini to get to the top tier of sporting events.<\/p>\n<p>But this year they did!<\/p>\n<p>Since they&#8217;re seeded #1 in their bracket, I&#8217;ve been glued to watching the NCAA March Madness Finals.\u00a0\u00a0You have to go back to 2005 before they even made it to the Championship game (they lost to North Carolina).<\/p>\n<p>So I hope you&#8217;ll bear with my absence from <em><strong>&#8220;Friday Fun&#8221;<\/strong><\/em> posts for the next couple weeks until my Fighting Illini are crowned NCAA Champs!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Illinois_Logo_Fighting-Illini.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-43154\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Illinois_Logo_Fighting-Illini-227x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"227\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Illinois_Logo_Fighting-Illini-227x300.jpg 227w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Illinois_Logo_Fighting-Illini-114x150.jpg 114w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Illinois_Logo_Fighting-Illini.jpg 343w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 227px) 100vw, 227px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a U of Illinois alum, I have to admit that (sadly) it&#8217;s not all that common for my Fighting Illini to get to the top tier of sporting events. But this year they did! Since they&#8217;re seeded #1 in their bracket, I&#8217;ve been glued to watching the NCAA March Madness Finals.\u00a0\u00a0You have to go <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2021\/03\/19\/blaming-it-on-march-madness\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4312,4313,4311],"class_list":["post-43153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-basketball","tag-illinois","tag-ncaa","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}