Truth be told, his final record was .500 — at best.
But three decades later, Vince Giannini still misses those late-night, high-stakes, ultra-competitive Illini Union battles at ... table hockey.
“We used to go to study downstairs at the Union and it never failed that we would take multiple breaks each evening and go play the USA vs. Russia table hockey game that was in the hallway, complete with a few bars of the national anthem to start each game,” says Giannini, then a proud Phi Kappa Psi member and now senior vice president and general manager of Philadelphia’s WPHL-TV and WDCW-TV.
“Didn’t matter if it was a group of guys from the fraternity, friends from a class or a study group project — you had to play the game.
“Long before social media and smartphones, you needed an escape and you went and found the table hockey game. Sadly, I believe I finished my four years at the U of I with no better than a .500 record but plenty of winning memories.”
