Illini Football 2026

Second place is 1st loser said:

At some point you have to pay your good players.

If they don't play as freshmen, then they'll play as sophomores, just with less experience and we have to live with growing pains. Then, they'll have to get paid as a junior. This is all based on the assumption that they stick around and don't transfer to a place where they will play immediately. This is a instant gratification world with these kids/parents. They want things, they want it now and they'll leave if they don't get it.

If they play as freshmen and do well, then they are much more seasoned going into their second year, but they'll get paid sooner.

So, they're either get paid as Sophomores or Juniors. You're not going to get around paying these kids. We either accept that and raise the money to keep them or we continue to go into the portal and get what we can afford, which as we've seen on the defense.....what we can afford isn't very good.

It all comes back to the same conclusion.....either have the money and be good or don't and have a ceiling of average.

There is a third option, which is go the Iowa route and put what we do have on the defense and on the offensive line. Get an average QB, some average receivers, a decent back and win games in the trenches. A defense travels, an offense doesn't. You can win with a dominant defense and an average offense. The reverse isn't true. It's not the most exciting brand of ball, but I'd rather win 14-10, then lose 42-21. That's a money management decision.

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Realistically we will never be able to afford to have the dline depth we had last year. I’ve said it a million times but this roster construction is flawed because you have a ton of money tied up to offensive linemen who aren’t playing. You take a couple million from that room and use it towards the defense. We will have a lot of money coming off the books we just have to be smart. Hopefully they budget increases another 5-10 million also.

that was a good game:

the juiceman cometh said:

This is a far more central question than you make it out to be though. Nobody, not even Larry Gies of Shad Khan, is giving Illinois athletics a blank check. There is an upper limit to anyone's generosity. And so where those resources get allocated is a crucial decision. It's not mere happenstance that we apparently have one of the most expensive basketball rosters at the same time our football coach is complaining that we're getting outspent. Those things are intimately related.

So I'm going to ask again, but in a non-rhetorical way, if you could would you change the allocation for this season? Would you give up Andrej to the NBA so that we could have Coenen and McCollum, and Durojaye, and Olano back? (Would that be enough to get all of them?)

And given what we've seen on the field and on the court, would you change that allocation going forward? Would you reduce Brad's budget by $5 million so you could give Bret an extra $5 million?

I actually want people to answer because I think it's an important question. No wrong answers, it's a judgment call. To put my cards on the table, I would not. I would keep basketball as the number one priority. I think BU's consistency and recent track record make us far more likely we win in that sport, and I think we have a clearer path. I also am more a basketball than football fan so I'll admit that bias as well.

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Completely agreed. We just came off of a Final 4 and have the capacity to keep a solid chunk of the core for the next season...you must prioritize that and be one of the front runners to get to the Final 4 again (if not national champ contenders if all comes together perfectly). When you think of March, all you think about is the Big Dance. College football season competes with the NFL, and nobody truly thinks of December/January as College Football, the way that March is almost solely seen as college basketball. I think we almost have no choice but put the chips all in the basket for trying to get that elusive national championship in basketball.

I know that this sounds crazy in some ways, but the football team took a slight step back last season. Yes, it was a great season from a traditional standpoint, but we were supposed to compete for a CFP spot. We ultimately were nowhere close to belonging there (and you could see wind in the sails from a fan perspective deflate a lot after the humbling loss at IU). In addition, with the expansion of the CFP, the bowl games are becoming increasingly less meaningful (though I would never complain about beating SEC schools two years in a row in bowl games). With the way this football season was supposed to take a step back to begin with, I am completely fine with the allocation of resources going more toward basketball, IMO.

However, I am still adamant that our current 3-3 record is not because we did not pony up enough NIL for the football program (mental mistakes killed us against Duke and not even sure where to classify the Purdue game). Sure, we were never going to compete for a CFP spot, but we still should have been able to get to 6-7 wins (if we could get to 6 wins we should all celebrate that with how difficult the second half of the season is shaping up). Football is just so hard in the sense that the roster sizes are much larger and you have to get creative with how the money is spent. More NIL would have helped this season, but in now ways would be all of a sudden be contenders. We simply had too many holes to fill with the roster turnover that was expected from last season.

During the lull of the Bye week, thought I'd do a check-in to see what Bobby Hauck is up to since his departure

the juiceman cometh said:

This is a far more central question than you make it out to be though. Nobody, not even Larry Gies of Shad Khan, is giving Illinois athletics a blank check. There is an upper limit to anyone's generosity. And so where those resources get allocated is a crucial decision. It's not mere happenstance that we apparently have one of the most expensive basketball rosters at the same time our football coach is complaining that we're getting outspent. Those things are intimately related.

So I'm going to ask again, but in a non-rhetorical way, if you could would you change the allocation for this season? Would you give up Andrej to the NBA so that we could have Coenen and McCollum, and Durojaye, and Olano back? (Would that be enough to get all of them?)

And given what we've seen on the field and on the court, would you change that allocation going forward? Would you reduce Brad's budget by $5 million so you could give Bret an extra $5 million?

I actually want people to answer because I think it's an important question. No wrong answers, it's a judgment call. To put my cards on the table, I would not. I would keep basketball as the number one priority. I think BU's consistency and recent track record make us far more likely we win in that sport, and I think we have a clearer path. I also am more a basketball than football fan so I'll admit that bias as well.

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I've always said that a football championship would be sweeter, just because it would be harder to do / longer odds / would elevate the national perspective of the whole school (a la Indiana).

But by the same logic, we are far more likely to have national success (and have had some already) in basketball. So my head tells me that Brad gets the money. It's not even a question of football vs basketball (I like them about equally) or even Brad vs Bret. It's more a debate between a great / below-average combo of teams, or having two mediocre teams (given our limited funds). I prefer the former.

A select few schools can afford great teams in both. I don't think we can, and at Illinois, that means basketball gets the cash.

Fighter of the Nightman said:

Lol, GOD I wish I were a billionaire who could just waste his extra cash on making the Illini elite.

"Alright, Josh ... I have $150 million here that I want to go toward my beloved Illini. And you can have $5 million of it today for NIL."

"... and if you use this $45 million to fix the ugly-!!! Horseshoe, I will give you the remaining $100 million to also use for NIL."

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You don't know how much we wish you were a billionaire, Fighter!

Battle89 said:

I've always said that a football championship would be sweeter, just because it would be harder to do / longer odds / would elevate the national perspective of the whole school (a la Indiana).

But by the same logic, we are far more likely to have national success (and have had some already) in basketball. So my head tells me that Brad gets the money. It's not even a question of football vs basketball (I like them about equally) or even Brad vs Bret. It's more a debate between a great / below-average combo of teams, or having two mediocre teams (given our limited funds). I prefer the former.

A select few schools can afford great teams in both. I don't think we can, and at Illinois, that means basketball gets the cash.

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but Brets “ budget “ was determined in Dec-Jan, WAY before Josh et al had any idea how the hoops season was going to end .