Illinois Football Recruiting Thread

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#176      
illini0440
lblesy said:
Is Carnell Tate a thing or just a pipe dream? Saw his commitment is set for next month after recently visiting Illinois
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jon stewart wish GIF
 
#184      
EyeoftheIllini
Anyone know anything about 4-star 2023 DL recruit Payton Kirkland from Florida (other than what is on his 247 page)? I noticed last night he tweeted that he received an offer from Illinois and the tweet said, “This one means a lot.” Anyone know if he has some kind of connection to Illinois or was he just being nice? He has about 45 offers, so it would be interesting to know if there is some story behind him.
 
#185      
IllinoisssssssVarsity
EyeoftheIllini said:
Anyone know anything about 4-star 2023 DL recruit Payton Kirkland from Florida (other than what is on his 247 page)? I noticed last night he tweeted that he received an offer from Illinois and the tweet said, “This one means a lot.” Anyone know if he has some kind of connection to Illinois or was he just being nice? He has about 45 offers, so it would be interesting to know if there is some story behind him.
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Nothing other than a guess but maybe a personal connection to Aaron Henry? He’s from fla.
 
#188      
EyeoftheIllini
RichBradIllini said:
A poster on 247 said his (Kirkland) sister works for Fahey in the Ath. Dept.
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There is a Tianna Kirkland who is head coordinator of recruiting for Fahey. No mention at all of FL in her bio (went to Ferris State and then worked in Michigan prior to coming to IL), but that doesn’t mean anything. Would be great and quite a coup if he came to Illinois.
 
#189      
mhuml32
Joel Goodson said:
Feagin is visiting again (2nd week in a row). I think we're getting him.
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At worst this is a great sign. Still unsure if he'll pull the trigger early but would be an excellent start to 2023.


Also on 2023, any insight into Deakon Tonielli? He's the (1) top Illinois prospect via 247, (2) is a TE, and (3) is in an area where Illinois has traditionally had success (Oswego) but surprisingly doesn't have an offer from Illinois.
 
#193      
ChiefGritty
Dan said:
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That article does a remarkably poor job of explaining the situation.

It's fairly simple. The super-seniors all got to come back, putting 5 years worth of players on every team. 100+ scholarships, the 85 scholarship limit does not count toward those players this year.

The NCAA wants to go back down to 85 next year. And the membership does too, all those added scholly's (which are general charged by the school against the athletic department's budget) puts a tremendous strain on everybody's resources when their resources are stretched as it is.

The problem is that everybody got a free year in 2020, meaning once again in 2022 you're going to have 5 classes for 4 years worth of scholarships. So if they have to get down to 85, that means mass Creaning at every single school in the country. A whole class has to go.

But of course, if every school is Creaning a ton of players to eke under the scholarship limit, that means the players who get Creaned don't have any available options whatsoever, they all just get frozen out of college football en masse all at once. Which is horribly unfair.

Expanding the 25 player signing limit to account for players LOST to the portal allows for there to be some downward filtering of players who get kicked off of rosters.

The weird part is, it very much encourages coaches to Crean all the way up to whatever the cap they suggest will be. Because those then become freebie spots to choose from this big one-time talent swap-o-rama.

The moral of the story, on some level, is that basically all conventional wisdom about new coach roster building is chucked out the window in analyzing what Bielema is doing. It's a radically different, totally unprecedented landscape. These decisions are critically important and will make or break his tenure, but they are unlike any decisions that college football coaches ever had to make before. Good luck Coach.
 
#194      
ChiefGritty
https://twitter.com/x/status/1438248824275865604

My rough count just now was 73 scholarship players with the ability to come back for 2022. So if we're planning to bring as many as 30 in, that means 18 have to go in order to fit. There will obviously be some natural attrition, but that's gonna be a lot of Creaning.

But this will be every program in the country. It's gonna be nuts.

And of course, keen observers will note that the NCAA's claim that 2020 would be a "free year" for the players, inducing them to head back to campus in the teeth of Covid last year, was absolutely a bald-faced lie if the 85-scholarship limit remains. Color me shocked.

Anyway, I do get a little trepidation about this, because the seesaw from "yes, we want EVERYBODY back, even you Desmond Dan and Kendall Smith and Marchese Brother Number Five" to "the bottom 25% of the roster is getting thrown overboard into a transfer market where very few slots are available" is going to be some whiplash in that locker room.
 
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#195      
Illwinsagain
ChiefGritty said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1438248824275865604

My rough count just now was 73 scholarship players with the ability to come back for 2022. So if we're planning to bring as many as 30 in, that means 18 have to go in order to fit. There will obviously be some natural attrition, but that's gonna be a lot of Creaning.

But this will be every program in the country. It's gonna be nuts.

And of course, keen observers will note that the NCAA's claim that 2020 would be a "free year" for the players, inducing them to head back to campus in the teeth of Covid last year, was absolutely a bald-faced lie if the 85-scholarship limit remains. Color me shocked.

Anyway, I do get a little trepidation about this, because the seesaw from "yes, we want EVERYBODY back, even you Desmond Dan and Kendall Smith and Marchese Brother Number Five" to "the bottom 25% of the roster is getting thrown overboard into a transfer market where very few slots are available" is going to be some whiplash in that locker room.
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I agree on this point. Last year, BB and his staff didn't have a grip on who could do what. I would hope, after a year with the players, they would know who they would like to offer a 5th year.
 
#197      
NJJ871
Hawk19 said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1438514064716558350

Just saw this tweet. Don’t know anything about him. I’m assuming most any transfer from OU would be a nice pickup, but is this kid any good?
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He was a 2-star recruit out of Bolingbrook, IL who spent the 2019-20 seasons at Independence Community College (Juco), before accepting a preferred walk-on role at OU for this season. If he's already shopping, it sounds like it isn't going to work out in Norman. It's hard to see that he's any sort of upgrade, but I don't really know.
 
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