I still can’t forget about the pre-pandemic days when Illinois football was at an all-time low.
The excitement at that time was whether a single four-star recruit would even entertain the idea of coming to Champaign and playing for the Illini. We would ultimately miss out on the recruit the vast majority of the time.
Bret Bielema has changed the course of Illinois football. He entered the picture, and one of the first things he addressed was the quarterback position. Bielema inherited Brandon Peters and managed to still achieve something that had only been accomplished in three out of the prior nine seasons: win five games.