I am really excited about these in-state pickups that the staff is getting. If a lot of these kids stick and do so for a few years, this creates a trickle down effect that will only benefit the Illini. These kids have families and friends, and the High Schools and surrounding areas all have fans that will all follow the Illini along with these commits. This is the kind of stuff that pays immediate dividends as well as 5-10-15-plus years down the road. Can you imagine how many texts, calls, messages this kid got after announcing his commitment to the UI???? Multiply that by however many people you think that may be?!?!? This is good stuff for the program!!! We have some in-state kids on this team, today, playing vital roles. Illinois is a pretty fertile recruiting ground, football and basketball. It's all FREE ADVERTISING when one of these kids break out! I wonder if there is a way to determine the percentage of Illinois HS preps that have been on the team in the past 10-15 years. I'd be curious to see if there is a trend. I know BB seems to be doing well in that regard. While I'm on that subject, is there a site that lists NFL players by the state they attended High School? I would guess Illinois has been a consistent producer of talent over the years. I wonder what that graph would look like superimposed over a graph of in-state kids we've signed over the same period?
tl/dr: I'm so happy to see what appears to be a significant increase in the number of Illinois kids being recruited/signed by the Illini in recent years!
Also, anyone who's not excited about signing this in-state 3 star TE, you've got to remember, Bielema/Wisconsin did very very well recruiting primarily 3-star recruits.