Illini Football 2026
Battle89
- Cary-Grove, the better Trojan team
Not sure signing NIL agreements means much either (twice). See Johnson, Morez.
Battle89
- Cary-Grove, the better Trojan team
Curbelo Fanboy
BERTBALL IS LIFE
The current model, IMO, will start to become unsustainable fairly quickly. A decade or so. Every time somebody writes a check for NIL & that doesn't pan out it is gonna be harder to get that amount of $ from that person the next time. So there will be a gradual squeezing of the market when it comes to NIL dollars. I also won't be surprised if, over time, some mid level D1 programs (not P4 schools) decide football just ain't worth it any more & step down to FCS. At some level of D1 the juice just isn't gonna be worth the squeeze to try to compete at a reasonable level. I could perhaps see this at some of the low level D1 leagues. Maybe a MAC or SunBelt or some league like that for the schools that are fledgling at the bottom of those leagues.
According to the Athletic, we were in the $19-22M range, which put us close to the bottom of the BIG and less than half of what tOSU and Oregon spent, and roughly half of what UM, IU and USC had available.
Assuming these estimates are fairly accurate, there is a great deal to unpack from this article . Illinois is 14th in the Big 10 by these metrics.
man, credit to bielema because it's been a while since i saw a fresh "here is a college football metric. there's illinois hanging out in the bottom quartile" type of graph.
but there it is. i just don't know how this happened since the vibes seemed immaculate for the last couple years. the 5-7 season hurt our momentum but we won ten the next year. getting completely dismantled by an indiana team nobody knew was an unstoppable juggernaut also can't have helped, but we beat usc shortly thereafter.
everyone in the program had to know we were headed for a bit of a roster cliff after 25, did the boosters not know or did they not care?
this is a bit depressing.
but there it is. i just don't know how this happened since the vibes seemed immaculate for the last couple years. the 5-7 season hurt our momentum but we won ten the next year. getting completely dismantled by an indiana team nobody knew was an unstoppable juggernaut also can't have helped, but we beat usc shortly thereafter.
everyone in the program had to know we were headed for a bit of a roster cliff after 25, did the boosters not know or did they not care?
this is a bit depressing.
As premier University in a top 5 State for GDP output, and with a top 3 US City for GDP that is also where our student population predominantly comes from…
I feel we should have a stronger budget for our Athletic Department. Hell, Michigan and Ohio spends like they’re Texas, and you’re telling me Detroit and Cleveland and/or Cincinnati rival Chicago?
Obviously, the nuances like Chicago being a more national and international city could mean we don’t have as solely committed of a local base as some of these other cities (ie Milwaukee to Wiscy, Detroit to Mich/MSU, Indy to Ind/Purdue, etc), but our total alumni population has to at least match those other cities, if proportions aren’t as high. We gotta tap into this money.
Wisconsin even admitted defeat and got the state government to fund other departments in order to free up money and NIL for their trending downward football program and other athletics.
Just consider this a crazy rant. Gotta be better and we have access to more resources that’s all
I feel we should have a stronger budget for our Athletic Department. Hell, Michigan and Ohio spends like they’re Texas, and you’re telling me Detroit and Cleveland and/or Cincinnati rival Chicago?
Obviously, the nuances like Chicago being a more national and international city could mean we don’t have as solely committed of a local base as some of these other cities (ie Milwaukee to Wiscy, Detroit to Mich/MSU, Indy to Ind/Purdue, etc), but our total alumni population has to at least match those other cities, if proportions aren’t as high. We gotta tap into this money.
Wisconsin even admitted defeat and got the state government to fund other departments in order to free up money and NIL for their trending downward football program and other athletics.
Just consider this a crazy rant. Gotta be better and we have access to more resources that’s all
Iowa is one of the teams below us? That’s kind of shocking to me.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
If 10-3 followed by 9-4 to go along with back to back SEC Bowl wins gets us to 14th in conference, I’m scared to find out where 6-6 will place us.
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lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
On an unrelated note, did you guys know Beckman’s “take away those 3 plays” quote was basically fake? Made up by the media essentially.
Here’s the story from Robert’s latest article. I had no idea:
After Illinois lost at Washington 44-19 in 2014, the following quote was all everyone talked about after the game. It became the defining quote of the entire Tim Beckman era:
The issue with that quote, as I wrote at the time, was that it was a mashup quote. I was standing right there with the other media members at Husky Stadium. He did not say those three sentences consecutively. They were simply combined to make it sound like one quote.
He said the "big strike" thing in reference to the 21 point blitz (in the first half, Illinois gave up a 75 yard bomb, a fumble return for a touchdown three plays later, and a pick six not long after that), then he answered a question about penalties in the game, then he answered a question about the pressure from Washington's defensive ends, and then he was asked what message he gave to his team at halftime. He said that he told his team there were still 30 minutes left and that "you take out 21 points on three plays and we're in this game" as a way to communicate that there's a lot of football left. (Spoiler: we did not come back in the second half.)
With that context (answering a "how did you try to rally your team at halftime?" question), it's a fairly innocuous quote. Combine one of his answers from earlier ("in three plays we gave up 21 points") with that answer, making it sound like he stood in front of the media after a game he lost 44-19 and said "you take out 21 points on three plays and we're in this football game", and it will take off like wildfire. It's now all you remember about Beckman. And it was cooked up on a laptop by not telling the reader that he was asked to quote himself from halftime when he was trying to rally the troops for a comeback.
www.illiniboard.com
Here’s the story from Robert’s latest article. I had no idea:
After Illinois lost at Washington 44-19 in 2014, the following quote was all everyone talked about after the game. It became the defining quote of the entire Tim Beckman era:
The issue with that quote, as I wrote at the time, was that it was a mashup quote. I was standing right there with the other media members at Husky Stadium. He did not say those three sentences consecutively. They were simply combined to make it sound like one quote.
He said the "big strike" thing in reference to the 21 point blitz (in the first half, Illinois gave up a 75 yard bomb, a fumble return for a touchdown three plays later, and a pick six not long after that), then he answered a question about penalties in the game, then he answered a question about the pressure from Washington's defensive ends, and then he was asked what message he gave to his team at halftime. He said that he told his team there were still 30 minutes left and that "you take out 21 points on three plays and we're in this game" as a way to communicate that there's a lot of football left. (Spoiler: we did not come back in the second half.)
With that context (answering a "how did you try to rally your team at halftime?" question), it's a fairly innocuous quote. Combine one of his answers from earlier ("in three plays we gave up 21 points") with that answer, making it sound like he stood in front of the media after a game he lost 44-19 and said "you take out 21 points on three plays and we're in this football game", and it will take off like wildfire. It's now all you remember about Beckman. And it was cooked up on a laptop by not telling the reader that he was asked to quote himself from halftime when he was trying to rally the troops for a comeback.
More Duke Stuff
Nathan has a billion things going on right now so he's been unable to write his usual Monday "Postscript" column. In its place last week, I simply wrote "More UAB Stuff." So why not write "More Duke Stuff" this week? There's so much more to talk about. You
www.illiniboard.com
Or.......it incentivizes some people to pony up.
It really all comes down to $ now, doesn't it? Another $5M in NIL and we have a legit shot at going 10-2 and in line for a playoff berth
mhuml32
Gesture of Northern Aggression
This is a circular issue. They were caught off-guard because TAMU was offering many multiples more to McCollum than Illinois was or willing to pay. You can also look at how the program responded and the players they were able to convince to join the team was not impressive. There was an incorrect assumption of the defensive line market and the on-field results are showing that.
This is not a new problem, assistant coach salaries have been growing substantially for decades, staffs are 5x bigger than 20 years ago, recruiting budgets have likely 100x'd in the same time period, and now almost every P4 program has a GM and staff dedicated to personnel, recruiting, portal, and coaching staff financials. They are (handsomely) paid to project the costs and organize a plan for roster construction. If you do a poor job of allocating your resources, the subsequent on-field results will impact your employment status.
The crazy part is in 2024 when OSU won the championship the talking points were about their $20M roster. So, the cost has over doubled since then.
What I also take from this somewhat is that, yeah the playing field is not equal. So any and every time we pull an upset on Ohio State, Michigan, USC, and other high spenders, it is absolutely embarrassing for them.
Ohio State has a roster worth nearly twice as much as us? If we’re to win in that condition, they deserve to be drug the mud over how that happens. A loss is expected and sucks, but a win? For example a 2007 type event, I’ll spend the rest of my days reminding them of that upset without mercy, because with how much resources they get to put towards their team. Like an MLS team beating a Premier League team.
We complain about lack of money for serious talent, yet we just lost to a team that has significantly less $ than we do... That's a tough pill to swallow.
But we have a bigger scoreboard.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Upsets happen. Oregon just lost to Oklahoma St.
But on average, the teams with the most money win the most games. If we would’ve had an extra $10 million in NIL and were able to adequately build our front 6 on defense, would we be better than we are now?
Probably the best and most accurate reporting on actual roster costs we've had in a long time. Not sure if its paywalled but here's where we are compared to the rest of the Big Ten (how the heck are we poorer than Northwestern, Rutgers, and UCLA?)_:
We're also right near the bottom of the entire P4 with schools like Cal (!), Virginia, BYU, NC State, TCU, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt all with deeper pockets this season:
How is this possible?
We're also right near the bottom of the entire P4 with schools like Cal (!), Virginia, BYU, NC State, TCU, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt all with deeper pockets this season:
How is this possible?
How is Rutgers that bad with more money?