I'll just chime in to say I would be perfectly happy drawing Northwestern, Purdue, UCLA.
Northwestern is a lock. Let's just get to consistently beating them for a long period of time, please.
UCLA gifts us a trip to SoCal every other year to play the easier of the two LA teams. This would be a grand slam pairing for Illinois' football program.
Purdue is a legacy Midwestern Big 10 University. Everyone has their preference on which Midwestern Big 10 team we get paired with, but I'll be happy having any of them as our 3rd opponent. I know plenty of Purdue grads and it would be yet another game against a program we can compete with, so this checks all my boxes.
It is hard to beat that combo of rivals, imo. Of course, if the (yet again) latest round of rumors about the Big 10 talking with 4 schools in the Pac-12 have any merit (I doubt it), this whole exercise will be yet another exercise in futility trying to discuss college re-alignment.
Illinois is in great shape, either way. I'm much more worried as a New Mexico fan.