Gameday Central | Game Notes | Illinois Homecoming | Buy Tickets
For the sixth straight year, the Fighting Illini football team will honor Harold "Red" Grange, the Galloping Ghost, by wearing special "Gray Ghost" alternate uniforms for Homecoming when the Wisconsin Badgers come to Memorial Stadium Saturday for a Big Ten West showdown (11 am CT on BTN). Saturday will mark the second time wearing the updated Gray Ghost uniforms in the new Nike "Untouchable" uniform style, unveiled in April 2018.
The Gray Ghost uniforms debuted at Homecoming 2014 on the 90th anniversary of Grange's historic Homecoming performance against Michigan in the Memorial Stadium dedication game on Oct. 18, 1924. In that game, Grange scored four touchdowns and racked up 262 total yards in the first 12 minutes, then ran for a fifth touchdown and threw for a sixth to lead the Illini to a 39-14 victory in what many consider the greatest single-game performance in college football history.
Famed sports writer Grantland Rice tabbed Grange as a "gray ghost" following the Michigan Performance:
A streak of fire, a breath of flame
Eluding all who reach and clutch;
A gray ghost thrown into the game
That rival hands may never touch;
A rubber bounding, blasting soul
Whose destination is the goal.
Red Grange of Illinois!
-- Grantland Rice, 1924
