Illinois scheduled an overseas football game 30 years ago — in Moscow. The story of the Glasnost Bowl and why it fell apart.
Mikhail Gorbachev's blue Illinois football jersey is kept neatly folded in an old equipment room in Champaign.
The No. 1 jersey was never delivered 30 years ago as intended to the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Neither were the similar jerseys now stacked alongside Gorbachev's: one each for former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan earlier that year.
Pulling off a college football game halfway around the world, in a nation with a poor economy and even worse understanding of the sport, proved too difficult, and the trip was scrapped about two months before the scheduled kickoff. The game was played instead at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and the No. 22 Illini beat the fifth-ranked Trojans 14-13.
Illinois announced two weeks ago it will open the 2021
