I don't follow football recruiting nearly as closely as basketball so someone explain this to me. How is Illinois last in recruiting after 2 of the best seasons in Illinois history back to back and what I had been told was a very sizeable NIL budget?
Illinois Football Recruiting Thread
If I had to guess we are probably in the bottom third of the conference in regards to NIL budget. That combined with the fact that we spent big on the highly rated 2026 class is what led to this current class
Because the gap between the other big $$ programs continues to increase.
Our budget is more "sizeable" than last year. And way more sizeable than 3 or 4 years ago. No one's denying that.
But as our pockets are increasing, so are the other's, at even more exponential proportions.
.....
In the end, the staff has to prioritize two major areas over prep recruiting: retention and the transfer portal.
You need to retain your star players. You have ZERO chance at a competitive program if you don't. Signing X prep recruit is not worth losing someone like X. Scott, Matt Bailey, Calil Valentine, etc etc.
And then, the transfer portal. Making your mark in that market is significantly more meaningful than prep recruiting. Making a splash with a Katin Houser is much more impactful for your program, than any of these prep prospects we have on campus.
almost all recruiting rankings are based on high school commits and does not factor recruiting of college transfers nor re-recruiting your own players ( retention) .
our prep class for 2027 is intentionally small in quantity and therefore will show up near the bottom .
we also have no real history of signing multiple 5 star or lots of 4 star players . those player rankings tend to be overly inflated for players going to traditional football blue bloods anyway
our smaller prep class being made up of mostly 3 star guys will lead to a lower “ranking”. but in today’s world , it matters a lot less than it did 5 years ago . what really matters is the ability of your top 48 (two deep) to contribute at a high level . BB has chosen to focus on that , in much the same way Cignetti has done with great results in his tenure at IU .
some schools have NIL budgets to promise to pay prep players . we don’t . The five star preps all expect big bags of cash . see Bryce Underwood . as such , we just won’t get many or any . it’s okay . there are other valid formulas for successful roster building
I think NIL is spent more on retention than recruiting. In looking over the past few years I did notice that currently our average score for the 27 class is 86.67 while the 25 class is at 86.79, so nearly identical. While that average was higher in 26, we are still getting good guys.
Overall, and contrary to another thing I tell my wife, (recruiting class) size does matter in rankings. So far only 3 big ten schools have a small number of commits, making it tough to be much higher in the rankings.
They are going to spend a tremendous amount of money on retention for the 2027 roster. They like the 2026 class, and they are going to play a large amount of guys in the 2026 season with elgibility remaining for 2027 and beyond.
Next priority is transfer portal.
Distant 3rd in dollar value is HS players.
The single biggest factor at this point in recruiting (retention, transfer portal, HS) is money. Where teams allocate their money spent is going to be reflected.
Indiana is doing a similar philosophy I will add.