Especially to the likes of Indiana.
Illinois Football Recruiting Thread
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
If BB can’t turn this ship around, I have no faith it can be turned around.
illinidarrin
- from parts unknown
Let's get a commit or two and change the feeling.
Unfortunately that's where I'm at too. And this is no insult to BB implying he's not trying. I fully believe he is doing his best, and defying expectations along the way. We are just so below the rest, I don't know if Illinois football can ever truly be "turned around".
Then start scheduling non conference teams you can beat. Just like Wisconsin did in the '90s. You NEVER put a SEC/Big 12/ACC team in you non conference schedule. That's Josh's biggest eff up to date. No idea what he was thinking when he did that - some Belleville alum screaming in his ear?
If you can share, how did you know it was coming?
Joel Goodson
- dawgville
3 star safety (2025) out of Paducah. Vandy commit:
Yup Illinois needs to buy out the Missouri games and the Duke games- use some of that tv money
I'd wholeheartedly disagree. That said, the things that made BB a solid hire several years ago aren't the traits that are necessarily most valuable today. BB is a developmental coach, and while he may land the occasional 4*, his strengths are illustrated far more when athletes stick around to be developed. These days, the coaches that are most successful recently are those that can energize their fan/donor base to contribute NIL to buy talent. Given how few recruiting battles we are in relative to others, you wonder whether a developmental coach has much success in the current environment
But, Rutgers, Purdue, Kansas, etc have shown that you can be an awful program for a while and then find success
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
It's dependent on the donor but region, history, and fan interest are primary factors. Could one season improve the NIL donation interest? Sure. But how much? Not enough to instantly reach the NIL levels at perennial 9-10 win programs. This stuff can snowball with prolonged and improved winning - such as 90's Wisconsin - or sudden interest from one of your very top donors. But even someone like Khan throwing in $20 million to kickstart NIL isn't going to instantly make Illinois a perennial top-25 program.
I'm not as interested in the massive, one-time injection because it's just so improbable. The hope is that Bielema can keep piling up 6-6/7-5 winning seasons and find ways to keep incrementally beating expectations. This would move the needle for fans to keep money trickling into the system and recruits getting Illinois the edge in recruiting against similar programs. This is partially why the many stumbles and close calls last year that left Illinois short of a bowl bid was so painful. There could have been so much narrative of breaking the long streak, winning seasons, etc. that was lost.
I'm going to piggyback off my post
You have a limited amount of NIL. I'll use this example as it's current. What if (I have no idea if true), Indiana beat Illinois on Chandler because of NIL money? Giving NIL money to HS players has to be looked at more closely than proven current or portal players. I don't know these number are accurate but would you rather have 2.5 Chandlers or 1 Zakhari Franklin? Give me Franklin and the current WR group on the team ( I know they won't play together but that level of player).
You need to be very sure a HS player will ultimately contribute before throwing out a lot of NIL and that can be dicey.
I have real doubts that NIL is trickling down to these level of recruits, but if it is, I still can't believe Chandler is getting that much. He isn't a good enough playmaker to believe he's going to get lots of snaps as a freshman. You would be committing two years of NIL payments before any payoff (when Chandler could just leave after his first year or those same payments can be used on a transfer that's guaranteed to play immediately). That said, if Chandler is getting NIL - it either means their staff thinks he's an immediate playmaker or IU has enough donor money that they can toss around some cash on solid but not elite HS recruits. Either way, it's a bad sign for Illinois.
The only correct answer is you need both Franklin and Chandler. Illinois can't afford to pay for the Franklins every year, meaning you need home grown talent that can be kept at a discount or greater certainty of success.
Agree wholeheartily. I believe BB made some really crucial mistakes with promoting coaches from within. We don't have time to develop Coordinators. Need proven ones. Lost our momentum.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
If Indiana beat us out via more NIL, we have no one to blame but ourselves … that isn’t losing out to Michigan or even a Wisconsin. Thats embarrassing.I'm going to piggyback off my post
You have a limited amount of NIL. I'll use this example as it's current. What if (I have no idea if true), Indiana beat Illinois on Chandler because of NIL money? Giving NIL money to HS players has to be looked at more closely than proven current or portal players. I don't know these number are accurate but would you rather have 2.5 Chandlers or 1 Zakhari Franklin? Give me Franklin and the current WR group on the team ( I know they won't play together but that level of player).
You need to be very sure a HS player will ultimately contribute before throwing out a lot of NIL and that can be dicey.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Record’s past 3 yrs:
Rutgers: 16-24
Purdue: 21-18
Kansas: 17-21
Illinois: 18-19
Under BB, we are those teams.
How are we losing a commit to Indiana of all programs? What is going on?
redwingillini11
White and Sixth
- North Aurora
I don’t really understand what has changed in the past few days around here. We’ve been staring down this reality of Illinois football in a stacked 18 team B1G for some time now. It’s looking no more daunting than it has since it came together. I ask, what about that has changed?
If it’s our recruiting in general, well it’s about on par with how it’s been under BB, and as others point out our quality of recruit appears to be higher than a lot of the other programs who just have some volume in their class at this moment. Of course it’s not on a competitive level with the top have of the conference, but when did we expect it to be?
If it’s about this recent decommit, well, I hate losing a commit to a conference rival as anyone. But we lost a kid to his home state school. At WR, a very expendable and replaceable position. I don’t like anyone decommitting from us, but I’m not going to lose sleep over this one.
Now, if there are serious cracks and we are about to lose half of our 2025 class who are walking away from us, then yeah I’ll be sounding the alarm bells with the rest of you. But I thought we had done fairly well with our visits and that we were told there are some booms on the way.
The outlook for our future of making a bowl game scares me, certainly. It’s why I will be the first to beat the drum to drop the Mizzou series. We need 3 easy wins in noncon to have a chance at a bowl. I don’t love that. But I don’t understand why there is just now panic in the streets.
If it’s our recruiting in general, well it’s about on par with how it’s been under BB, and as others point out our quality of recruit appears to be higher than a lot of the other programs who just have some volume in their class at this moment. Of course it’s not on a competitive level with the top have of the conference, but when did we expect it to be?
If it’s about this recent decommit, well, I hate losing a commit to a conference rival as anyone. But we lost a kid to his home state school. At WR, a very expendable and replaceable position. I don’t like anyone decommitting from us, but I’m not going to lose sleep over this one.
Now, if there are serious cracks and we are about to lose half of our 2025 class who are walking away from us, then yeah I’ll be sounding the alarm bells with the rest of you. But I thought we had done fairly well with our visits and that we were told there are some booms on the way.
The outlook for our future of making a bowl game scares me, certainly. It’s why I will be the first to beat the drum to drop the Mizzou series. We need 3 easy wins in noncon to have a chance at a bowl. I don’t love that. But I don’t understand why there is just now panic in the streets.
I don't believe there is panic in the streets, if you will. Given the overall state of the football program over the last 10 years (or longer), panic has passed.
Instead, there are a few of us who just took a brief evaluation of where we're at right at this moment. This is what we are seeing--
-2025 recruiting class (composite) is currently 2nd to last in the conference. Not where we want to be. Certainly can still end up better than that, but it's not good right now.
-Lost a solid recruit from that class to an Indiana. Again, not the end of the world but still something we don't like to have happen.
-Our non-con schedule is difficult so bowl games are going to be very challenging to achieve and without that gaining more HS recruiting traction is going to be difficult.
-And if a guy like BB can't get it done at Illinois, where do we go next if that has to happen?
We love our Illini, but at this point in time, we have more than our fair share of football program challenges to meet and solve.
I absolutely hate it when an Illinois kid commits to Iowa.
https://www.on3.com/teams/iowa-hawkeyes/news/fitzgibbon-makes-college-decision/
https://www.on3.com/teams/iowa-hawkeyes/news/fitzgibbon-makes-college-decision/
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
People aren't going to digest how radically different college football is now until they see it.
Bigger bags than we offered…..that’s one good reason.
Couldn't have said it better myself
Unfortunately, the college sports world that I grew up with and loved is gone, probably forever. It was a different product than the NFL/NBA; in my opinion a better product. Now it's just another professional sport, albeit with fewer guardrails
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
All fair points!
(1) Recruiting has shown a marked improvement under Bielema (see post from spring where I did a breakdown of substantial improvement for commits with other offers), but this class is showing a regression. All of this is within the context of changes year-to-year and comparative to conference.
(2) I don't see a panic. There's a difference between people point out the now-apparent cracks, silent acceptance. or lacking reality. We are less than a month from someone posting that this might be the best recruiting staff in Bielema's tenure, which now looks like an overreaction because of a lack of results.
(3) The obvious is that wins are one of the very few things that matter. Couldn't agree more on the Mizzou series needing to be dropped. It's completely indefensible that there's an upcoming season where Illinois will play Duke and Missouri in the same non-conference.
(4) The concern about the 2025 class is we are not seeing the same success in the June visits that we saw last year. There are less available guys that make sense for the remaining needs and this class might become more dependent on being finished with unheralded or project recruits or heavier transfer portal needs ($).
I'm real nervous about both ...
Chandler didn't get a ton more money to go to IU ... Actually from what I was told, it was the same $$$ ...