Illinois Football Recruiting Thread
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mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
Heck, I think you could start a really compelling narrative that Bielema, with another .500 or better season, and Illinois are the place to go if you want to be certain the head coach is still there when you finish your college degree. This might be a shock to some folks but Beilema is already the 6th longest-tenured B1G coach (out of 18). Only Fleck, Locks, Day, Ferentz, and Schiano have been around longer than him. Not likely, but it's possible a couple of those names are gone next year.
HUDL and instant access to film, the shift in attention to the transfer portal, and easier scoops from camps has made a lot of recruiting "analysts" focus on breadth instead of depth.Keep in mind, outside of the top 200-300 recruits, recruits are simply ranked based on the school they choose to go to.
From a recent article by Robert on Illiniboard:
“The national websites apparently no longer rate every recruit and just slot them based on the school they choose (with a sprinkle of inflation every year!). From my research in that article:
Individual player ratings from 247 for players in our 2014 class: 70, 76, 77, 78, 78, 79, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 85, 88, 91, 96.
Individual player ratings from 247 for our 2024 class: 82, 85, 85, 86, 86, 86, 86, 86, 86, 86, 87, 87, 88, 88, 88, 88, 88”
The 90 Illini #79: Brandon Hansen
Ah yes, I can finally do one of my "when a player commits to Illinois super early, there's no chance he will be rated and evaluated properly" rants. Hansen committed during the fall of his junior year. And no one (besides Illinois fans) pays attention to Illini recruits beyond thatwww.illiniboard.com
In 2014, our recruiting ratings ranged from 70 to 96. In 2024, our ratings range from 82-88.
In another article from Robert in the past few days, he also makes the point that a kid’s sophomore film will have 3,000+ views, whereas his senior film will have 20 views, even though senior film is infinitely more valuable to ranking recruits.
It's more cost efficient for these recruiting sites to just sell Kool Aid on your typical top-1000 recruit than to spend the time to properly evaluate
Illwinsagain
- Cary, IL
This is disheartening.....but it is what it is. Or, was what it was?
I think Mike Farrell (?) said something similar on a recent podcast. Illinois recruit. Auto 3 star, and they do not spend resources to go back and reevaluate at a later date.Keep in mind, outside of the top 200-300 recruits, recruits are simply ranked based on the school they choose to go to.
From a recent article by Robert on Illiniboard:
“The national websites apparently no longer rate every recruit and just slot them based on the school they choose (with a sprinkle of inflation every year!). From my research in that article:
Individual player ratings from 247 for players in our 2014 class: 70, 76, 77, 78, 78, 79, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 85, 88, 91, 96.
Individual player ratings from 247 for our 2024 class: 82, 85, 85, 86, 86, 86, 86, 86, 86, 86, 87, 87, 88, 88, 88, 88, 88”
The 90 Illini #79: Brandon Hansen
Ah yes, I can finally do one of my "when a player commits to Illinois super early, there's no chance he will be rated and evaluated properly" rants. Hansen committed during the fall of his junior year. And no one (besides Illinois fans) pays attention to Illini recruits beyond that
In 2014, our recruiting ratings ranged from 70 to 96. In 2024, our ratings range from 82-88.
In another article from Robert in the past few days, he also makes the point that a kid’s sophomore film will have 3,000+ views, whereas his senior film will have 20 views, even though senior film is infinitely more valuable to ranking recruits.
If what we saw this off-season is gonna be the norm, Bret is doing exactly what some people want Brad to do right?
Recruit some program guys and hit on some. When the rest don’t hit and choose to leave, replace them with impact transfers.
Recruit some program guys and hit on some. When the rest don’t hit and choose to leave, replace them with impact transfers.
Rankings can always have criticism, but when the schools that consistently rank in the top ~40 are the same schools that consistently go to quality bowl games, then you can't ignore the correlation. Outside of the occasional anomaly season (2022?), if we recruit at the levels we have the last few seasons, we will be a bottom quartile team in the conference.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
For sure, that’s why recruiting experts stopped evaluating prospects.
It’s way easier to say:
Michigan recruit: 5 star.
Iowa recruit: 4 star.
Illinois recruit: 3 star.
Than to actually evaluate film for thousands of recruits and assign a true grade. Just let the schools evaluate prospects for you.
—> And for the most part, the recruiting sites get it right. If Michigan signs a player, that player probably *is* better than an Illinois player, so why spend so much time on evaluation?
Today though, offer lists are much more valuable than player grades and it seems as though the players were landing have offer lists better than they used to. I believe a poster here has shared some of that data in the past.
GrayGhost77
- Centennial, CO
Again, look at offer lists not star ratings. The players we are getting now generally have more P5 offers than our recruits from 4-5 years ago, so given the laziness of the ranking sites (and Robert has gone over this many times), and given our transfers have generally been impact players, I feel reasonably okay with where recruiting is and has been under Bielema.
That makes no sense though. Nobody stopped evaluating prospects. Rankings are made (most often) before a recruit is committed. Sure, they are updated, but very few times does anyone get downgraded. So, when a player performs great at a camp as a Soph, they aren't a UM, OSU, etc. recruit yet. They are just an uber-talented athlete. And then they get a bunch of offers, which I'd agree are the best predictors. But, we haven't been landing 4*+ recruits, nor recruits that have legitimate top offers. Whether you want to argue it's egg->chicken or chicken->egg, the end results are the same for UI
Yes, recruiting is a glaring weakness for Bret. It's said because he is a really good coach.
Really good coaches can always bring in really good recruiters to help mask their weaknesses. I think Brett has tried and succeeded in some extent. I think Stepp is a good choice and in retrospect I think Walters was also a very good recruiter (as we can see by him winning multiple battles against us).
BB prioritizes spending NIL on Transfers and retaining players who have developed here. As long as that is the case we aren't ever going to have a great recruiting class. It is a path to winning more though which should bring more NIL which could bump us up. I don't think it's realistic for us to ever think we'll have a class in the top half of the B1G while Brett is here.
Joel Goodson
- dawgville
I think you are underestimating the deep, deep hole we were in, especially from a recruiting POV, that we were in when BB took over
I (kinda) get why BB doesn't have his coordinators recruit heavily, but as you insinuated, that seems to really be a strategic error. We've seen what Walters can do at Purdue, and I think Henry was one of our better recruiters as a position coach. I'm sure BB wants his coordinators to focus on development/coaching, but it hurts when it hamstrings your ability to bring in talent
His coordinators recruit, or at least are very involved in the recruiting process. The assistants and position coaches are the ones who are generally out travelling though.
Bret and Aaron were literally on a recruiting trip when he promoted him to DC if I recall.
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
I can understand the connecting-of-dots, but we'll need to see more data on Walters-as-a-HC first. If he has another underwhelming year, it will be harder to argue that Walters focusing more on recruiting has been a net positive for Purdue.
It will definitely help the guy who replaces him though. P2 conference with a roster full or athletes would be enticing to any coach.
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
I wouldn't be certain about this - Purdue had 29 outgoing transfers this offseason - including guys who transferred to Texas A&M, Maryland, Oklahoma, Arizona State, Vanderbilt, & Mississippi State. Unless you're a program with a flush collective, you have to assume firing a coach also means 30+ current players leaving for other opportunities.
Trying to get caught up here on recruiting news and here's what I find... recruiting's fluid so just let the process play out bc it doesn't matter outside of the hidden gems We find/develop, then fill in the gaps with transfer. It's a new world of terrible cfb in following recruits 
illinidarrin
- from parts unknown
This is exactly my point, If you have enough NIL money and the player could get a nice contract with that school, they will come. GT is clearly not better than the other schools recruiting him, but money talks.
SampsonRelpenk
- Edwardsville, IL
O-line is such a difficult position to project, dropping that much cash on a high school recruit is quite a gamble.
I would reserve that for a skill position player/maybe even a DL, not an OL.
LT I would but not for an unproven high school player. I'd take JC Davis, even 1 year, for big NIL. Get him drafted, you'll have plenty portal picks to choose from next year. Josh Petty will do nothing for GT next year.
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