BRANDON PETERS

Brandon Peters threw for 242 yards and a touchdown and Illinois rolled over Big Ten rival Northwestern 47-14 on Saturday. With the resounding win to end the regular season, Illinois hopes to secure its second bowl bid in five years. “It's been fun to build this thing,” first-year Illinois coach Bret Bielema said.

Casey Washington caught a 2-point conversion pass from Brandon Peters to end the first nine-overtime game in NCAA history and lift Illinois over No. 7 Penn State 20-18.

Nine of the 14 Big Ten football teams appear set at quarterback heading into the fall.

Both tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday and will be sidelined 21 days per Big Ten protocol. Both would be eligible to return for the Nov. 21 game at Nebraska. Illinois also announced that contact tracing sidelined several other players for the Purdue game and next week’s game against Minnesota. Sophomore Matt Robinson started at quarterback for the Ilini. The Illini opened the season last week at Wisconsin, whose team has had 22 players and staff test positive for COVID-19 this week.

Mertz threw five touchdown passes to match the Wisconsin record in a commanding first career start and the No. We’re a better football team than that.”After Illinois fumbled the ball away on the game’s second play from scrimmage, Mertz hit fullback Mason Stokke for a 10-yard touchdown pass. Illinois briefly got back into it late in the second quarter when Ferguson fumbled at the end of a 9-yard completion. Mertz responded to Illinois’ touchdown by throwing a 34-yard completion to Ferguson and then hitting the tight end again for a 14-yard score with 1:06 left in the half. After Illinois went three-and-out on its next series, Mertz threw deep and found Danny Davis for a 53-yard touchdown pass with 28 seconds left until halftime.

Ed Braddy, chairman of Alachua Countys Republican Party, announced Thursday that he is withdrawing from the congressional race to replace U.S. Rep Ted Yoho. The former Gainesville mayor cited a stacked Republican candidate pool for Floridas Third Congressional seat as the reason. Federal election data shows six Republicans are now in the running to replace Yoho, who announced in December that he is retiring from Congress. State campaign data reports also show Matthew Raines from Gainesville and David Theus from Fleming Island have filed as Republicans. The third district encompasses Alachua, Clay, Putnam, Bradford and Union counties, and much of Marion County.

This past week, a Florida Democratic Party mass email was sent to potential volunteers calling on them to "protect the vote in Florida in 2020." The funds will go toward hiring, training and equipping voter protection teams in Florida and Georgia. Palm Beach County has over 400,000 Democratic voters and are outpacing Republicans in voter registration, according to the Florida Supervisor of Elections office. Florida Democrats hope to register 200,000 more voters statewide before the 2020 vote. Both parties said they will depend on volunteers to man voter protection hotlines during all elections.