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Rod. He had won a competitive military scholarship that paid for three years of tuition, launching an army career that lasted well into adulthood. He’d retire years later as a lieutenant colonel with the army reserves.
    Soon after graduating, Robert and Julie married in August 1977 in Florida. Although the military scholarship and ROTC program required Robert to finish four years of active reserve, the newlyweds planned to move to Tallahassee where Robert would be attending graduate school in Eastern European studies at Florida State University. Robert and Rod were going their separate ways in life. Rod had just finished his sophomore year at Tampa, and with his big brother leaving and Chicago calling him home, he decided to transfer. He applied to both Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Because he had a respectable grade point average at Tampa and didn’t have to take the standardized tests at which he was clearly dreadful, Northwestern accepted him. Finally cutting away from his older brother, Rod was going to move back to Chicago and enter Northwestern as a junior majoring in history.
    Blagojevich moved back home with $3,500 in his pocket, hooking back up with friends Mike Ascaridis and Dan Stefanski. He also met new friends at Northwestern, guys from other parts of the country and wealthier families. Tuition at Northwestern was high, so Rod lived at home with his parents and Millie’s oldest sister, Helen. He delivered pizzas in his 1971 Dodge Dart for a neighborhood joint named Abondanza Restaurant and Pizzeria, where Stefanski also worked.
    Though back in Chicago, Blagojevich felt out of place at Northwestern. A city kid, Blagojevich took public transportation or drove through much of the city to the stately Evanston campus, appearing in class wearing a black leather jacket and white T-shirts he bought at stores near Milwaukee Avenue and Division Street on the near Northwest Side. His Izod shirt-wearing classmates looked every bit the part of the preppies populating campuses all around the nation. While Rod listened to the King, they listened to Bruce Springsteen.
    â€œI always felt that these kids at Northwestern, you know, they came from wealthier families, they came from better schools. I always felt a little bit intimidated that they were a lot smarter than me,” is how Blagojevich put it on the witness stand in 2011. “And I hadn’t been able to get in the first time, and so when I got there, I was afraid that, you know, maybe I wouldn’t measure up to the other kids.”
    Still, Blagojevich’s amiable personality enabled him to make friends and traverse the two distinct worlds. Among the friends he made at Northwestern was Bill Powell, who soon joined Blagojevich and Ascaridis carousing around Chicago, picking up girls and “being assholes,” as Powell recalled. After some late nights, Blagojevich, Powell, and a few other friends wound up at a twenty-four-hour diner on the border between Chicago and Evanston called the Gold Coin. They called it the Cold Groin. Once or twice, Powell recalled, the young men would run out of the diner without paying the bill just for laughs. They called it “yo-ho”ing in an apparent pirate reference.
    Blagojevich constantly talked sports, history, and politics. He played the field with girls but didn’t have anyone steady. And he talked about his brother constantly. “He idolized Rob. That was key to Rod,” Powell said.
    Powell sometimes spent weekends in Cragin with Rod, sleeping over at the Blagojevich family apartment. Powell quickly realized the same thing Rod knew—he really didn’t fit in at Northwestern.
    â€œI think in some ways he reveled in sticking out on campus,” Powell said. “He had such a chip on his shoulder, and he knew he had to do the work to be a success.”
    In addition to the obvious differences like taste in clothes and music, Blagojevich had adopted many