I'm not going to get too riled up over in-state recruiting anymore. It's been like this for as long as i can remember watching Illinois football. Get a new coach and in the first year or two things look decent with in-state recruiting and then it kinda falls apart for some reason. We will get about 5 decent to good in-state players year, but we will never get several of the top players in the state in 1 class.
I don't believe we will consistently and seriously compete for the top talent in the state until we have some sustained success on the field. One year of 8-5 followed by a year of 5-7 is not sustained success. Illinois Football has never had sustained success and therefore never landed those recruits. Since the B1G went to an 11 game schedule in 1971 (and then 12 games in 2002) we have won at least 9 games only four years, and after every one of those in the subsequent years, we returned to mediocre or bad teams....and we've finished above .500 only five times since 2000. Compare that to the likes of Iowa, Wisky, scUM, Notre Dame, etc., etc., etc. Wisky used to be bad and in came Barry Alvarez. He got things turned around....from 1-10 in his first year in 1990 to 10-1 in 1993, and since then except for a couple of years they've kept it rolling. Now it appears as though Miznoz has turned it around. We are close, I think...we could have/should have won at least a couple more games this past year...but based upon results on the field it was a step back.
