Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
It’s very difficult to guess, BUT I think we find out tomorrow.
Illini Football 2024
- Status
Memorial Stadium Sellout Watch 2024 is packing up for the winter! What a fun home season that included TWO sellouts, including the first since 2016. As others have noted, the average attendance of 54,750 per game is the most for a season 2009. Not to mention the 6 wins on the field that we fans got to witness and experience in person.
I started religiously tracking the sales of tickets at Memorial Stadium in 2022, and it's amazing how much different things are now than they were just two seasons ago. Back then, we had a 7-1 team and were running a $15 per ticket flash sale the week of the Michigan State game, just to draw 56k. Now we have thousands more season ticket holders. We have better student engagement that sold out its allotment of 6,500 tickets. Even the gameday experience and atmosphere have seen massive improvements (I was one that waited ~40 minutes in the security/ticket scanning line for the Week 0 game against Wyoming in 2022...a game that drew only 37,832
). All this results in fans coming to the tailgate lots, going into our beautiful and historic stadium, being part of a raucous crowd, possibly seeing a thrilling win and walking out thinking, "that was so much fun and I can't wait to do that again." As the football program is slowly turning the ship around, the fanbase is tracking along side. As @Fighter of the Nightman has pointed out, there are plenty of reasons why we CAN be a fanbase that draws consistently well and sells out MS on the regular. But we're still building that muscle memory - that habit of being at the stadium every home Saturday. I think we can get there.
For those that care enough to indulge me, I'd like to recap my attendance tracking/guessing this season. My attendance guesses technically averaged a difference of (379) per game, but that is helped by my over-estimation in Week 1. On an absolutely value basis, my guesses varied from the actual attendance by 874 per game. Despite knowing so much more about the ticket sales/availability trends on a week-to-week basis than I did when I started this a couple years ago, I still find it pretty hard to try to pin down the announced attendance number haha. I'd also be remiss if I didn't shout out @GreenDotWatch (account on Twitter) that showed me a way right before Week 1 to glean ticket availability data by inspecting the webpage data. This allowed me to "manually" refresh my ticket counts in about 5 minutes. Before that I was literally counting green dots and logging the counts for each row in a spreadsheet. That method could take me over an hour to get a refreshed tracker count.
For those that have voiced an appreciation for this series, that means more to me than you probably know. It's an obsession for me regardless, but knowing there are others interested too gives me the motivation to share my findings more broadly. Here's to what was a fun 2024 home season and to an even better one in 2025. I-L-L
Oh, also, if you have any suggestions for improvements or things you'd find interesting to include in the Sellout Watch series, I'm all ears.
I started religiously tracking the sales of tickets at Memorial Stadium in 2022, and it's amazing how much different things are now than they were just two seasons ago. Back then, we had a 7-1 team and were running a $15 per ticket flash sale the week of the Michigan State game, just to draw 56k. Now we have thousands more season ticket holders. We have better student engagement that sold out its allotment of 6,500 tickets. Even the gameday experience and atmosphere have seen massive improvements (I was one that waited ~40 minutes in the security/ticket scanning line for the Week 0 game against Wyoming in 2022...a game that drew only 37,832
). All this results in fans coming to the tailgate lots, going into our beautiful and historic stadium, being part of a raucous crowd, possibly seeing a thrilling win and walking out thinking, "that was so much fun and I can't wait to do that again." As the football program is slowly turning the ship around, the fanbase is tracking along side. As @Fighter of the Nightman has pointed out, there are plenty of reasons why we CAN be a fanbase that draws consistently well and sells out MS on the regular. But we're still building that muscle memory - that habit of being at the stadium every home Saturday. I think we can get there.For those that care enough to indulge me, I'd like to recap my attendance tracking/guessing this season. My attendance guesses technically averaged a difference of (379) per game, but that is helped by my over-estimation in Week 1. On an absolutely value basis, my guesses varied from the actual attendance by 874 per game. Despite knowing so much more about the ticket sales/availability trends on a week-to-week basis than I did when I started this a couple years ago, I still find it pretty hard to try to pin down the announced attendance number haha. I'd also be remiss if I didn't shout out @GreenDotWatch (account on Twitter) that showed me a way right before Week 1 to glean ticket availability data by inspecting the webpage data. This allowed me to "manually" refresh my ticket counts in about 5 minutes. Before that I was literally counting green dots and logging the counts for each row in a spreadsheet. That method could take me over an hour to get a refreshed tracker count.
For those that have voiced an appreciation for this series, that means more to me than you probably know. It's an obsession for me regardless, but knowing there are others interested too gives me the motivation to share my findings more broadly. Here's to what was a fun 2024 home season and to an even better one in 2025. I-L-L
Oh, also, if you have any suggestions for improvements or things you'd find interesting to include in the Sellout Watch series, I'm all ears.
chiefini
- Rockford, Illinois
Thank you, @IlliniInBuckeyeState, for all of your hard work. I really enjoyed your updates and guesses every game as well as your final stats. I hope you continue to do these on IL for future seasons.
Memorial Stadium Sellout Watch 2024 is packing up for the winter! What a fun home season that included TWO sellouts, including the first since 2016. As others have noted, the average attendance of 54,750 per game is the most for a season 2009. Not to mention the 6 wins on the field that we fans got to witness and experience in person.
I started religiously tracking the sales of tickets at Memorial Stadium in 2022, and it's amazing how much different things are now than they were just two seasons ago. Back then, we had a 7-1 team and were running a $15 per ticket flash sale the week of the Michigan State game, just to draw 56k. Now we have thousands more season ticket holders. We have better student engagement that sold out its allotment of 6,500 tickets. Even the gameday experience and atmosphere have seen massive improvements (I was one that waited ~40 minutes in the security/ticket scanning line for the Week 0 game against Wyoming in 2022...a game that drew only 37,832
For those that care enough to indulge me, I'd like to recap my attendance tracking/guessing this season. My attendance guesses technically averaged a difference of (379) per game, but that is helped by my over-estimation in Week 1. On an absolutely value basis, my guesses varied from the actual attendance by 874 per game. Despite knowing so much more about the ticket sales/availability trends on a week-to-week basis than I did when I started this a couple years ago, I still find it pretty hard to try to pin down the announced attendance number haha. I'd also be remiss if I didn't shout out @GreenDotWatch (account on Twitter) that showed me a way right before Week 1 to glean ticket availability data by inspecting the webpage data. This allowed me to "manually" refresh my ticket counts in about 5 minutes. Before that I was literally counting green dots and logging the counts for each row in a spreadsheet. That method could take me over an hour to get a refreshed tracker count.
View attachment 37375
For those that have voiced an appreciation for this series, that means more to me than you probably know. It's an obsession for me regardless, but knowing there are others interested too gives me the motivation to share my findings more broadly. Here's to what was a fun 2024 home season and to an even better one in 2025. I-L-L
Oh, also, if you have any suggestions for improvements or things you'd find interesting to include in the Sellout Watch series, I'm all ears.
Bravo! Great work! I always followed along with your posts on attendance, I always found it interesting. And I, as most all of us, really REALLY appreciate the effort you put into it. I'm glad you found some resources to cut down on the time you had to invest. I truly hope that someday you won't have to do this anymore because we are selling out the ENTIRE SEASON!!!!Thank you, @IlliniInBuckeyeState, for all of your hard work. I really enjoyed your updates and guesses every game as well as your final stats. I hope you continue to do these on IL for future seasons.
blackdog
- Champaign
Memorial Stadium Sellout Watch 2024 is packing up for the winter! What a fun home season that included TWO sellouts, including the first since 2016. As others have noted, the average attendance of 54,750 per game is the most for a season 2009. Not to mention the 6 wins on the field that we fans got to witness and experience in person.
I started religiously tracking the sales of tickets at Memorial Stadium in 2022, and it's amazing how much different things are now than they were just two seasons ago. Back then, we had a 7-1 team and were running a $15 per ticket flash sale the week of the Michigan State game, just to draw 56k. Now we have thousands more season ticket holders. We have better student engagement that sold out its allotment of 6,500 tickets. Even the gameday experience and atmosphere have seen massive improvements (I was one that waited ~40 minutes in the security/ticket scanning line for the Week 0 game against Wyoming in 2022...a game that drew only 37,832
For those that care enough to indulge me, I'd like to recap my attendance tracking/guessing this season. My attendance guesses technically averaged a difference of (379) per game, but that is helped by my over-estimation in Week 1. On an absolutely value basis, my guesses varied from the actual attendance by 874 per game. Despite knowing so much more about the ticket sales/availability trends on a week-to-week basis than I did when I started this a couple years ago, I still find it pretty hard to try to pin down the announced attendance number haha. I'd also be remiss if I didn't shout out @GreenDotWatch (account on Twitter) that showed me a way right before Week 1 to glean ticket availability data by inspecting the webpage data. This allowed me to "manually" refresh my ticket counts in about 5 minutes. Before that I was literally counting green dots and logging the counts for each row in a spreadsheet. That method could take me over an hour to get a refreshed tracker count.
View attachment 37375
For those that have voiced an appreciation for this series, that means more to me than you probably know. It's an obsession for me regardless, but knowing there are others interested too gives me the motivation to share my findings more broadly. Here's to what was a fun 2024 home season and to an even better one in 2025. I-L-L
Oh, also, if you have any suggestions for improvements or things you'd find interesting to include in the Sellout Watch series, I'm all ears.
Previous years I've gone to the last game of the season with one friend (nobody else would go) and walking through empty lots to an empty stadium. This year at pretty much every game I made comments about how the pregame atmosphere was MILES ahead of where we used to be. We also were so fortunate to have a lot of afternoon games and we didn't have a single bad weather game. It made me so happy to be walking through the lots and seeing so many people out having a good time. For years I would struggle to get 4 people together sometimes for a tailgate and when I did my own for the Michigan game I didn't even have to invite anyone and had a group of 12! Looking forward to doing it again next year even with a new little addition to the Illini family (gotta start em young right?)
Homecoming 2019
- Chicago
His blocking won't go unnoticed by NFL scouts.
As I was leaving my seat last Saturday I noticed the MSU players leaving and a majority of players were not even shaking hands. That seemed unusual for a game. Great win and on to Rutgers and then finding my seat in Wrigley for a victory.
That and you lead the conference in sacks
Joel Goodson
- how was I to know, she was with the Russians too?
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Thank you for your awesome work. I truly look forward to your updates before every game! I think some fans like to "simplify" the dynamics of building a program and take a sort of petty pride in ~not caring~ about "extra" details like our gameday atmosphere, uniforms, logo/fonts/brands, architecture/setup of the stadium, etc. "JUST WIN!" It's like, yeah man ... we all want that, we are just capable of thinking about some extra details at the same time.Memorial Stadium Sellout Watch 2024 is packing up for the winter! What a fun home season that included TWO sellouts, including the first since 2016. As others have noted, the average attendance of 54,750 per game is the most for a season 2009. Not to mention the 6 wins on the field that we fans got to witness and experience in person.
I started religiously tracking the sales of tickets at Memorial Stadium in 2022, and it's amazing how much different things are now than they were just two seasons ago. Back then, we had a 7-1 team and were running a $15 per ticket flash sale the week of the Michigan State game, just to draw 56k. Now we have thousands more season ticket holders. We have better student engagement that sold out its allotment of 6,500 tickets. Even the gameday experience and atmosphere have seen massive improvements (I was one that waited ~40 minutes in the security/ticket scanning line for the Week 0 game against Wyoming in 2022...a game that drew only 37,832
For those that care enough to indulge me, I'd like to recap my attendance tracking/guessing this season. My attendance guesses technically averaged a difference of (379) per game, but that is helped by my over-estimation in Week 1. On an absolutely value basis, my guesses varied from the actual attendance by 874 per game. Despite knowing so much more about the ticket sales/availability trends on a week-to-week basis than I did when I started this a couple years ago, I still find it pretty hard to try to pin down the announced attendance number haha. I'd also be remiss if I didn't shout out @GreenDotWatch (account on Twitter) that showed me a way right before Week 1 to glean ticket availability data by inspecting the webpage data. This allowed me to "manually" refresh my ticket counts in about 5 minutes. Before that I was literally counting green dots and logging the counts for each row in a spreadsheet. That method could take me over an hour to get a refreshed tracker count.
View attachment 37375
For those that have voiced an appreciation for this series, that means more to me than you probably know. It's an obsession for me regardless, but knowing there are others interested too gives me the motivation to share my findings more broadly. Here's to what was a fun 2024 home season and to an even better one in 2025. I-L-L
Oh, also, if you have any suggestions for improvements or things you'd find interesting to include in the Sellout Watch series, I'm all ears.
My point? This improvement matters and is important. So, before a random rant below, again ... thank you so much for helping those of us who really care about this stuff a REALLY cool insight to the attendance trends, and please keep up the great work next year! Anyway, some ways in which I think this is really important:1) We have a better home field advantage that might be good for an extra win or two per year. That might sound dramatic, but think about some of the most revered home atmospheres in football and basketball where the visiting team just expects a loss ... imagine the small yet massively important difference in those programs' success over the years if their home field/court advantage was just "meh."
2) Memorial Stadium and Champaign gain reputations as fun gameday destinations. This doesn't just improve the atmosphere and vibe for those already going, and it doesn't just increase ticket revenue as word spreads ... it FUNDAMENTALLY redefines the fandom dynamic in our state over time. People (especially Illinoisans) are risk-averse to "opening themselves up" if they feel they will surely be let down.******** If tailgating for a weekend in Champaign is seen as cool and worthwhile no matter how good the team is (and it IS seen this way in other Big Ten states, trust me), the fan base will keep growing. And that has obvious positive effects all over the place.
3) It helps our fan base gain the reputation as a passionate one. This doesn't just help with recruiting and gaining respect from the rest of the college football world. It can have effects ranging from the relatively minor like more Illini-dedicated bars popping up around the nation (and especially in somewhere like Chicago) to Illinois being a preferred participant in bowl games or high-profile non-conference matchups because they know our fans will show up.
******** For those who find this more interesting and at the risk of going on an OT rant, you see this all the time in sports ... fans will only stick with a team through hard times only if they feel that team is at SOME level "cool" and they can save face staying loyal while they're bad. It's one thing to be a Cubs fan and watch them lose but you are part of a timeless franchise with proven fan support and an unrivaled home field atmosphere/experience with Wrigley ... it's another to proclaim yourself a fan of a seemingly hopeless program that is just fundamentally not cool on any level. The latter is embarrassing to more casual fans, and that was Illini football not too long ago. Do you know why IU still packs the house for hoops even they suck and Nebraska still sells out every home game? Because those fans have drank the Kool-Aid regarding their own programs ... they have an unshakable faith that Bloomington/Lincoln is God's gift to college towns, they believe in their cores that the "brands" of Indiana basketball/Nebraska football are just destined to be forever cool, they think there is just too much going for their programs at a structural level to keep them from an eventual return to the glory days and they have developed a sense of pride in BEING a fan of those programs that extends beyond any results of the field. We need that ... nothing makes my blood boil more than Illini fans who have baked self-deprecation into their personalities. It doesn't make opposing fans think we are any more intelligent, reasonable, down to Earth, etc. They don't come away thinking, "Wow, Illini fans sure are classier than OSU fans!!" ... they instead laugh at us for our pathetically small amount of faith IN OURSELVES. Is there anything sadder than someone who doesn't believe in himself to the point that he jokes about it as a preemptive defense mechanism? Lol. No one is going to advocate for the Illini if our fans don't. We should be unapologetically talking about how Champaign, Memorial Stadium, the orange/blue color scheme and anything else unique to the Illini is just flat-out better than the counterparts at rival schools ... because that level of pride is what we're up against, pure and simple. Big time programs don't limit their fan bases to passionate alumni and maybe their kids ... we need random high school kids in the suburbs with connection to U of I being Illini fans for no other reason than that is what kids in other Big Ten states do for their state schools and it would be fundamentally embarrassing for them to have such a pathetically lower level of pride in comparison. A pipe dream? Perhaps, but it's what you ALWAYS work toward. And continuing to improve the gameday atmosphere is a WAY bigger deal to achieving that than I think many realize. People who happened to be watching our victory over Michigan in those awesome throwbacks in front of a sold out and loud stadium while CBS showered our program with praise for its impressive history saw a presentation of the Illini football brand that many probably had never seen ... we need to keep reinforcing that.
First, not sure I’d attach any significance what so ever to someone’s draft prospects because Robert labeled him as our #1 most important player. Second, most important player doesn’t necessarily even equate to best player or best pro prospect depending on makeup of the team.
I don’t spend much time looking at mock drafts until closer to actual draft since so much can change. But I’ve seen Bryant as high as mid-third round with several mentions in fourth. Highest Illini player I’ve seen mocked has been Jacas in late second round.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
Attachments
Great work!Memorial Stadium Sellout Watch 2024 is packing up for the winter! What a fun home season that included TWO sellouts, including the first since 2016. As others have noted, the average attendance of 54,750 per game is the most for a season 2009. Not to mention the 6 wins on the field that we fans got to witness and experience in person.
I started religiously tracking the sales of tickets at Memorial Stadium in 2022, and it's amazing how much different things are now than they were just two seasons ago. Back then, we had a 7-1 team and were running a $15 per ticket flash sale the week of the Michigan State game, just to draw 56k. Now we have thousands more season ticket holders. We have better student engagement that sold out its allotment of 6,500 tickets. Even the gameday experience and atmosphere have seen massive improvements (I was one that waited ~40 minutes in the security/ticket scanning line for the Week 0 game against Wyoming in 2022...a game that drew only 37,832
For those that care enough to indulge me, I'd like to recap my attendance tracking/guessing this season. My attendance guesses technically averaged a difference of (379) per game, but that is helped by my over-estimation in Week 1. On an absolutely value basis, my guesses varied from the actual attendance by 874 per game. Despite knowing so much more about the ticket sales/availability trends on a week-to-week basis than I did when I started this a couple years ago, I still find it pretty hard to try to pin down the announced attendance number haha. I'd also be remiss if I didn't shout out @GreenDotWatch (account on Twitter) that showed me a way right before Week 1 to glean ticket availability data by inspecting the webpage data. This allowed me to "manually" refresh my ticket counts in about 5 minutes. Before that I was literally counting green dots and logging the counts for each row in a spreadsheet. That method could take me over an hour to get a refreshed tracker count.
View attachment 37375
For those that have voiced an appreciation for this series, that means more to me than you probably know. It's an obsession for me regardless, but knowing there are others interested too gives me the motivation to share my findings more broadly. Here's to what was a fun 2024 home season and to an even better one in 2025. I-L-L
Oh, also, if you have any suggestions for improvements or things you'd find interesting to include in the Sellout Watch series, I'm all ears.
We averaged 19,407 more attendees per game in 2024 than the year Coach B took over. That's one third of this year's attendance, and up around 60% during his tenure, with all aspects of the game day experience improving across the same timeline.
Coach B. has the chance to finish this season with as many B1G wins as losses over his Illinois career, and just two conference wins short of Turner's total during his seven seasons. This is as fun as it is impressive, and I'm glad for the entire DI.
Bright days ahead for Illini athletics, it seems. Good. Illini nation deserves it.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Also while average attendance is the single most informative figure, I also think it's important to look at how many "good" crowds we are getting. One sellout in 2016 vs. UNC can inflate the average vs. the prior year if our floor is low enough ... but when you actually look at the number of times we are selling 50k+ tickets (anything over that at least makes the stadium start to look respectably full), that is really telling a story of growing this fan base!
CROWDS OF OVER 50,000 AT MEMORIAL STADIUM
2024: 6 (high of 60,670 x2)
2023: 3 (high of 54,205)
2022: 1 (high of 56,092)
2021: 0
--- Smith fired, Bielema hired ---
2019: 0
2018: 0
2017: 0
2016: 1 (high of 60,670)
--- Cubit not retained, Smith hired ---
2015: 1 (high of 51,515)
--- Beckman fired, Cubit hired as interim ---
2014: 1 (high of 50,373)
2013: 0
2012: 0
--- Zook fired, Beckman hired ---
2011: 5 (high of 60,670)
2010: 6 (high of 62,870, which was the old capacity)
2009: 5 (high of 62,870 x2)
2008: 6 (high of 62,870 x4)
2007: 5 (high of 57,078 x3, which was the capacity that year due to renovations)
2006: 1 (high of 53,351)
2005: 4 (high of 52,633)
--- Turner fired, Zook hired ---
2004: 3 (high of 55,725)
2003: 3 (high of 58,363)
2002: 5 (high of 69,249 which was the old capacity)
2001: 3 (high of 70,904 x2, which was the old capacity)
2000: 5 (high of 72,524, over capacity)
So, when you look at the number of large crowds and the number of sellouts, we are having the best attendance we have had since 2008 ... and we are not coming off of the excitement of a Rose Bowl appearance, we are coming off of a 5-7 season. That speaks to organic growth in our attendance floor!
CROWDS OF OVER 50,000 AT MEMORIAL STADIUM
2024: 6 (high of 60,670 x2)
2023: 3 (high of 54,205)
2022: 1 (high of 56,092)
2021: 0
--- Smith fired, Bielema hired ---
2019: 0
2018: 0
2017: 0
2016: 1 (high of 60,670)
--- Cubit not retained, Smith hired ---
2015: 1 (high of 51,515)
--- Beckman fired, Cubit hired as interim ---
2014: 1 (high of 50,373)
2013: 0
2012: 0
--- Zook fired, Beckman hired ---
2011: 5 (high of 60,670)
2010: 6 (high of 62,870, which was the old capacity)
2009: 5 (high of 62,870 x2)
2008: 6 (high of 62,870 x4)
2007: 5 (high of 57,078 x3, which was the capacity that year due to renovations)
2006: 1 (high of 53,351)
2005: 4 (high of 52,633)
--- Turner fired, Zook hired ---
2004: 3 (high of 55,725)
2003: 3 (high of 58,363)
2002: 5 (high of 69,249 which was the old capacity)
2001: 3 (high of 70,904 x2, which was the old capacity)
2000: 5 (high of 72,524, over capacity)
So, when you look at the number of large crowds and the number of sellouts, we are having the best attendance we have had since 2008 ... and we are not coming off of the excitement of a Rose Bowl appearance, we are coming off of a 5-7 season. That speaks to organic growth in our attendance floor!
Joel Goodson
- how was I to know, she was with the Russians too?
pretty good:
bsky.app
Illinois Football Focus (@illinifb.bsky.social)
Average Yards Per Punt Return #BigTen 1️⃣ Hank Beatty (Illinois) - 13.8 2️⃣ Tez Johnson (Oregon) - 12.9 2️⃣ Koi Perich (Minnesota) - 12.9 4️⃣ Kaden Wetjen (Iowa) - 12.9 4️⃣ Myles Price (Indiana) - 12.9 Data source: https://cfbstats.com/2024/leader/827/player/split01/category04/sort01.html
bsky.app
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
I don't know if I should be happy or sad about that statistic. I guess it could be both.
So much mediocrity over the years. Glad we finally have some "hopefully" long-term stability at the HC position.
you should be
2012 - 2022, four games with home attendance over 50k. You can kill a program like that.
It makes what Josh is doing all the more impressive, because his first hire was a complete failure. Lazy Lovie.
Lovie while a failure and not a program builder showed we were serious about changing our football fortunes and were willing to pay competitive prices to do so.
In an ideal world, Lovie comes in coaches up the team shows he's still a good coach and returns to the NFL after 2 or 3 successful seasons. Sets Illinois up as a place of upward mobility opening a new class of candidates to us.
It didn't quite work out that way, but showed us we need someone willing to really work and had success in college football.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Yeah, I distinctly remember the perception that RG's DIA was frugal and seemingly did not see the value in paying big bucks. We almost seemed to take pride in looking at the OSUs of the world as "wasting money" rather than rightfully being jealous of them for mobilizing their resources, lol. Though he had many faults, I do think Mike Thomas attempted to start to change that narrative by sending a message that Illinois was a destination that would "pay up," but of course the problem was that he was unable to court any actually good coaching candidates, lol. It's easy to forget this, but us hiring Lovie was absolutely national news and a "splash hire." There's a reason we were able to sell out his second home game after not sniffing a sellout for years ... fans were genuinely optimistic, even if that optimism fell apart rather quickly.
Josh hiring Bielema was truly an awesome move. Illinois SHOULD be a "big money" school with its size, alumni base and instate population ... period! We are not some small elite private school that has only alumni as fans, we are the state flagship for one of the biggest states in the country, and we have a MASSIVE alumni base. Our coaches used to be paid poorly compared to Big Ten rivals, and it is nice to see Bret paid in the top half of what is now a huge conference with multiple national powers:
Ryan Day (Ohio State) - $10,271,250
Lincoln Riley (USC) - $10,040,000
James Franklin (Penn State) - $8,500,000
Curt Cignetti (Indiana) - $8,000,000 [very recent new contract]
Luke Fickell (Wisconsin) - $7,625,000
Jedd Fisch (Washington) - $7,500,000
Kirk Ferentz (Iowa) - $7,000,000
Dan Lanning (Oregon) - $6,624,999
Bret Bielema (Illinois) - $6,500,000
Jonathan Smith (Michigan State) - $6,000,000
PJ Fleck (Minnesota) - $6,000,000
Mike Locksley (Maryland) - $5,500,000
Matt Rhule (Nebraska) - $5,500,000
Greg Schiano (Rutgers) - $4,000,000
Ryan Walters (Purdue) - $4,000,000
DeShaun Foster (UCLA) - $3,000,000
You'll see a lot of casual fans online say stuff like, "Bret Bielema is paid almost as much as Dan Lanning?!" or stuff like that ... and it's like, dude, we HAVE to pay that much to get a great candidate and keep him, and we should be PROUD that the DIA has that kind of cash, not pinching its pennies that are not ours, haha.
I looked up Pat's recruiting info and 247 had him listed with a 4.87 40 when he was recruited out of high school.
I have to believe that he is much faster than that, but his 40 time and Pro Day / Combine stats are going to be huge in regards to his draft stock.
- Status