Thanksgiving Day just got more gluttonous than ever for Illinois basketball fans

Move over football, Illinois basketball is about to take some of your shine on Turkey Day.

Thanksgiving has mostly been a day about eating and watching your favorite NFL team if they played on that day of thanks. For Illini fans, I would assume, like me, a large swath of you are Chicago Bears fans. They have a history of playing on Thanksgiving.

That day is no longer reserved for food and football. On Friday, the Illinois basketball program announced that the game against Arkansas this season will take place on Thanksgiving Day.

Illinois and Arkansas will head to Kansas City for the neutral site matchup. The game is slated to take place at 3:00 p.m. CT and CBS will cover the competition between what should be two of the top teams in the country.

Illinois basketball squaring off against Arkansas on Thanksgiving has some solid storylines

When I saw that this was a Thanksgiving Day game, I perked up. This is going to be a huge game on primetime television for the entire country to watch.

There are so many storylines that catch my eye too. Illinois and Arkansas are going to be ranked to start the 2024-25 season, and when Thanksgiving rolls around, the two teams could easily be in the top 10 nationally.

The fact John Calipari coaches Arkansas now is interesting. A few years ago, Calipari hired Illinois’ assistant coach Orlando Antigua. Earlier this year, when Calipari took the Razorbacks job, Antigua didn’t follow him and came back to Champaign

I believe this would also be the rubber match between Illinois and Calipari. The two didn’t face off when he was at Kentucky or his stint with UMass, but when Calipari was at Memphis, he did go up against Illinois in 2002 and 2003.

The series was split with each program winning at home. Illinois lost in 2002 to the Tigers by three points, but we got the best of Memphis at home in 2003 with a 10-point victory.

Getting a game on Thanksgiving Day is going to be fun. But let's be honest, after what I do to the Thanksgiving spread, I am lucky to be awake on the couch when game time rolls around.