Tatelines (A compilation of Loren Tate's best columns from more than 40 years of University of Illinois sports reporting)

AUTOGRAPHED COPIES NOW AVAILABLE!!!! The story line begins when a 34-year-old novice scribe arrived at The News-Gazette in the autumn of 1966, just missing football greats Jim Grabowski and Dick Butkus and basketball standout Don Freeman, and only four months ahead of the traumatic UI "slush fund." Tate's version of Illini athletics begins in that distant time, and comes to life in what were once daily columns. But it won't be told chronologically. Rather it weaves back and forth through the athletes, coaches and great rivalries, and through events that often tested the university.ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Loren Tate has covered University of Illinois sports for The News-Gazette in Champaign for more than four decades. Although he claims to be semi-retired he still produces four columns per week, and there is never any question about which side of an issue he stands on. Readers love him and readers hate him. But no matter what, they read him.