Illinois Football: 3 Takeaways from hiring of Bret Bielema as head coach

Illinois football has hired former Wisconsin and Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema and here are three takeaways for the Fighting Illini.

At one time, Bret Bielema was viewed as one of the best coaches in the Big Ten and after getting hired to be the next head coach for Illinois football, he will get the chance to prove himself once again.

After firing head coach Lovie Smith a little less than a week ago, it didn’t take Illinois football long to find his replacement as the school announced the hiring Saturday morning.

https://twitter.com/IlliniFootball/status/1340295921595265025

Obviously, Bielema is a well-known name in the Big Ten after spending seven seasons as the head coach of the Wisconsin Badgers (68-24) and in the Big Ten West, he will wind up playing his old team once every year.

For Illinois, it’s another shot at finding stability and trying to find a consistent winner, which has been nearly impossible for the program which has suffered through nine consecutive losing seasons.

Is Bielema the man to turn it around? Here are the immediate takeaways on his hiring.

A known winner

Getting a proven coach isn’t always that easy for a program like Illinois. Most of the time, that means giving a guy a second chance which is what Illinois football did with Lovie Smith and last year, following a 6-6 regular season and a bowl loss, things seemed to be headed in the right direction.

But Smith averaged just four wins per year and then went 2-5 in 2020. Smith had coached the Chicago Bears to the Super Bowl and like Smith, Bielema is a proven winners and has two Rose Bowl appearances, four double-digit win seasons and three top-10 finishes on his resume.

Obviously, his five-year tenure with Arkansas wasn’t as good, but he still led the Razorbacks to three straight winning seasons and if he could do that with Illinois football, he’d be a hero.