... but I’m quite confident we can convince Bret the ceiling here is actually higher than at Iowa … if he even needs convincing.
I've been thinking more about this, and I would welcome insight from insiders or others who just generally know more about this than I do ... or at least think they know more.
It really seems like there are two main factors that play into "how easy it is to win" at a certain job, and they are both extremely intertwined:
1. How (relatively) easy is it to recruit talent there?
2. How much financial support - whether that refers to salaries, NIL, facilities improvements or whatever else - will you get from the athletic department, donors and university?
These all have plenty of subcategories, but everything else seems tangential to those two things to me.
1. For recruiting, there seem to be lots of avenues to get there. Your Alabama examples are obvious - the brand they have built up (added on to Saban's reputation) recruits itself. Another avenue seems to be to be in a talent-rich state. I don't care what anyone says, it IS a slight advantage to be the "instate team" no matter what your program's standing is. An elite recruit from St. Louis might have his mind almost made up that he is going to 'Bama, USC, Michigan, Georgia - anywhere but Mizzou. However, if there is even the slightest pressure to include Mizzou in his top 10, a great recruiter in the Missouri HC job will have a fighter's chance to convince him to "stay home." That advantage just simply doesn't exist for Iowa or MSU trying to get that same St. Louis recruit. It might be a small advantage in and of itself, but it gives a new HC an invaluable opportunity to get a foot in the door. That is QUITE literally why we even had a shot to convince Ayo to come to a then-dead program and lead a complete resurgence. The next avenue seems to recruit based on "results" and because that place is "currently cool" or whatever ... pretty much how Clemson is getting players. Lastly, it would be a respect for the program's tradition and long-standing fan support that a recruit might just be enamored with ... aka why Nebraska still recruits pretty well, as does Indiana basketball, despite not having been elite in any sense of the word in decades. But REALLY lastly, and most recently, seems to be how competitive your NIL is ... and that is pretty much #2.
2. Regarding financial support, what really determines this? We tend to think of the "big money schools" as the ones with large athletic revenues and great TV ratings, but those are DIRECTLY tied to how good you are at football right now. And that only somewhat speaks to potential. For example, Illinois had $145.7 million in athletic revenue vs. $151.5 million for Iowa. However, Iowa made over $26 million from ticket sales alone compared to our $15.7 million ... that suggests that if Illinois had won as many football games as Iowa the past 7-8 years, we would be a higher revenue school, as it takes time to train fans to show up all the time. TV ratings are also directly tied to what channel you are on and how many times you get the prime slots. Wisconsin and PSU did not draw significantly better than Illinois when they had to be on BTN, and Illinois delivered great ratings when we got the chance on ABC or FOX. So, I think it pretty much comes down to how many donors you have and how much money
they have! Illinois has a massive alumni base (MUCH bigger than Iowa's, as another comparison), it has a huge endowment (at least somewhat indicative of your "ceiling" in this regard, if you ask me) and we have a huge state population to draw casual fans from when we are winning ... we have all seen them come out of the woodworks for seasons like the 2005 Final Four and 2007-08 Rose Bowl; they're there, and they're ready (if a bit fair weather!).
I think on both of those fronts, Illinois has shot itself in the foot too many times to truly rise into any sort of "elite" tier (i.e., Michigan or OSU or Florida) as far as potential goes, but I really think we stand out as a clear "sleeping giant" among that next tier of the Iowas, MSUs, Wisconsins, etc. The ceiling is very high, and it's often difficult for people to realize that until you have people like Josh Whitman and Bret Bielema frankly just show it to you!!