Illinois and Northwestern are storied athletic rivals, the most recent chapter going the way of the Fighting Illini, a 20-13 victory in the annual battle for the Land of Lincoln trophy conducted during an historic Champaign snowfall.

The game kicked off just hours after Northwestern reached a controversial agreement to restore almost $800 million in federal research funding while paying $75 million to the U.S. treasury over the next three years. Then on Monday, University of Illinois officials announced their school will get $1 million from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to join a program monitoring retail meat products for bacteria that may be growing resistant to conventional treatment methods.

Those developments aren’t related and the football game is just a handy news peg,

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