One thing I've learned from basketball is that there's no need to really worry about talent. Brad and Bret both get their guys. I'm not worried until spring rolls around. I was hoping for a couple more coaching moves, but they haven't been as aggressive there.
Illinois Football Recruiting Thread
- Status
247 ranked Justin Bowick as a 90 and one of the top WR transfers in the country based on minimal production, most of which came in the first two weeks of the season. On3 ranked him lower than Malik Elzy, a reciver who redshirtex and transfered becuse he couldn't get play time for us, and also lower than the top WR transfer we brought in (Perry). So if transfer portal rankings are more accurate, which one of those two assessments of Bowick is the accurate one? They say completely different things.
All you guys making single data point arguments don't help the position. Single data points can always tell the story you want. It's like me saying look at Sam Leavitt. He's thrown for over 4k yards at this level already so the portal rankings must be absolutely perfect
Look at the top 200 prep recruits and the top 200 portal recruits and tell me which you think will produce more than the other at the P4 level for the team that recruited them
Last edited:
Which is exactly the weakness of all the "data" that has been presented to suggest we are failing this offseason. Like when someone says " look how good Texas Tech, Miami, Ole Miss, and Oregon did in the 2025 transfer portal rankings, that shows that transfer portal rankings are legit" and ignores that the rest of the top 10 was filled with teams that had pretty bad or mediocre seasons.
Well herein lies the problem. Which top 200? Given that there's much less of a consensus top 200 in the portal rankings this presents a bit of a problem. Like, is Tomiwa top 200? How upset should we be about him? On3 has him at #406. Phew. Good but not irreplaceable I guess. But oh wait...247 has him at #49! Oh no, should I be freaking out?! Tell me how to feel Transfer Portal Rankings Gods!
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
The writers on 247 have literally said that they’re unable to rank all 4,000 transfer portal players.
madillini4
Ozamataz Buckshank
- Millywaukee
Who cares? The 3578th ranked portal player isn't relevant to any comparison. The top several hundred are very relevant and all sites rank those, and again, I'd be willing to compare the production of the top X hundred portal recruits vs. the same for prep and see which is going to be a better predictor. But, this isn't going to be close given nearly everyone in the top X hundred portal rankings have produced at this level
It doesn't matter. Pick any of them. It'll be the same outcome when using several hundred sample size
I guess I'm missing what your point with all of this is here?
IL under Bret has outperformed it's recruiting rankings, even before you confront that the rankings are not predictive of future success.
DeonThomas
- South Carolina
TRANSFERS-OUT: So our guys have until 11:59pm eastern this Friday to declare. Over/under on # of guys being either pushed out or opting to leave over these last four days. Are we done?
+/- 3
+/- 3
Slingin' Sammy Baugh snagged 4 picks in a game once
There was an assertion that portal rankings are meaningless and I argued they were actually a good predictor. But yes, I would presume a Bielema team would directionally outplay any ranking. Both can be true. Bielema is an absurdly great coach and the portal rankings are highly predictive
Good question. I'm taking under. I think if they're going they've already entered and announced.
mhuml32
Gesture of Northern Aggression
There's an argument, and you probably have a point about the top transfers (top 100), but there are design issues that make transfer portal rankings very hard.
- Very short timeline
- Extreme volume of players become instantly available
- You have very little public information on how many schools are actively recruiting transfer portal players
- Lots of players have no or little snaps played
And linebackers great centers, as Butkus fans know.
One thing that hasn’t been discussed about the portal is if there are 5000 kids in the portal, how many are good enough to start at Illinois? 200? 300? 10-20 kids at each position? Those kids are highly sought after and largely want highest bidder money. Illinois is not going to win many of those wars.
While the staff will pursue some of those players the reality is we are in the diamond in the rough additions more than we are in the outbid P2 schools for quality starters additions.
Maybe we can get 2 or 3 of those impact starters (Houser) we aren’t going to get a load of them.
While the staff will pursue some of those players the reality is we are in the diamond in the rough additions more than we are in the outbid P2 schools for quality starters additions.
Maybe we can get 2 or 3 of those impact starters (Houser) we aren’t going to get a load of them.
hooraybeer
- Peoria, IL
based on the insane number of transfers i wonder if the recruiting services would be better off having live “madden” ratings for every player on every team. would be much easier to put together a somewhat coherent rankings list if someone had had their eyes on the player intermittently all season. would be kind of fun to see a “madden” rating for each player throughout the year. i’m sure that 247 and similar services aren’t profitable enough to staff up to make it happen though
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Well there's a huge variance, right?
There are guys with four full years of regular snaps and game tape that can be scouted with a certainty radically different than any high school player.
And then there are guys who redshirted as true freshmen this season and saw zero snaps that are basically still HS recruits.
And everything in between.
It seems like this current class, and what BB has sought in the portal over the years more generally, has tended to be more from the "I know what I'm getting" side of things, with an understanding that maybe you miss out on the maximum potential upside by going that route. But then the upside of JC Davis was pretty darned high.
mhuml32
Gesture of Northern Aggression
I would argue that system already exists, it's PFF.
If rankings by commentators really meant as much as this discussion implies Illinois football would not have fared nearly as well under Bret as his on the field results. After his first year, and arguably including his first year, we have significantly out-performed our player rankings. Personally, as much as I enjoy reading all the angst, I’ll rely on the results on the playing field for my opinions on the state of Illinois football.
Good predictor of what though? 'Success'? On a team level 6 of the top 10 and 13 of the top 25 teams did not have a successful season. If I told you a predictive stat was wrong 60% of the time would you say it's 'good'?
IL's lone 4 star transfer last year was James Thompson Jr. Their 4 star for 2024 was Terrance Brooks. I wouldn't say either of them were particularly successful.
I think it's safe to say that transfer rankings are not an ideal indicator of future success and are particularly bad at gauging IL's future success (which since we're on an IL recruiting message board I think is the real question).
Last edited:
Hudson Clement was not a 4star. Zakhari Franklin was the FBS active leader in career catches, yards, and touchdowns and wasn’t a 4star. Neither of our two new receivers are 4stars but Justin Bowick and Tomiwa are 4stars.
Those rankings are useless. This isn’t high school. We literally have STATISTICS on sites like espn and sports reference available to us for crying out load.
Serious question: who here would rather have Justin Bowick than the FIU and FAU additions?
blackdog
- Champaign
I generally agree with your point about rankings but dont agree that Thompson wasn't successful. He was honorable mention All-B1G and a leader on the team. He wasn't a game changer but definitely one of the more impactful players on D.
one other correction: JC Davis was also a 4star in 2024 along with Terrance Brooks.
Last edited:
Yeah this is what I especially don’t understand about this argument. Why would we prefer these rankings over statistical data such as catches, yards, sacks, etc?
- Status