Amen to that. Another characteristic of those teams in the '80s (most of the time) was a QB who could throw, a solid running game, able receivers, and a strong line, all of which enabled the Illini to mix it up and move the ball. We also had lots of defensive talent in those years. Still, I remember that Michigan's O & D lines were just bigger than ours.
As another poster noted, we haven't recruited consistently across the O & D in many years. We just don't have the bodies currently to match up with most opponents. It will take time to build that. I'll have faith in BB to get that done until he shows us that he can't. It's early days right now.
For now I'm also going to ignore bitter Razorback guests who visit the board to kvetch about him. He was at Wisconsin for 7 seasons. He inherited a strong Alvarez team but had to rebuild within a couple seasons and did so, taking the team from 6th out of 11 in the conference in 2008 to three straight Rose Bowls in 2010-12. And not to get all Lasagna in defending him, but that final year when he went 8-6 and lost the Rose Bowl to No. 8 Stanford, four of those losses were by 3 pts (2 in OT) and the other two were by a single touchdown to Top 10 teams. [EDIT: Oh, and Wisc beat Nebraska 70-31 to win the BT title that year.]
I could get used to that.
Keep the faith, brothers and sisters. It's the first time we've had strong reason for hope in many seasons. But it'll be ugly for a while.