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

A better fit in Big Ten than SEC

During his five seasons coaching the Razorbacks, Bielema went 29-34 and then went to the NFL. But he did some have decent football teams with Arkansas, it just seemed like he underestimated how much deeper the SEC is than the Big Ten.

Some places, it’s just hard to win games consistently and he never really recruited the state of Texas well, which is something you simply have to do if you are going to be good at Arkansas.

However, Bielema just seems like a much better fit in the Big Ten conference. He knows the area and he should be able to do a better job of recruiting. Obviously, Illinois football has a long way to go in the recruiting department, especially when it comes to homegrown talent.

During Lovie Smith’s first few cycles, he had a couple of top-50 classes and many of those recruits were from Illinois. In 2020, Illinois football fell to 88th and didn’t sign a single in-state kid.

So Bielema’s first task is making Illinois a presence in local recruiting again because if the Illini can keep some of those kids, they can be competitive again.