Illinois football coach Bret Bielema is going backward.
Looking younger. Feeling so much better.
Bielema, 55, told the Sun-Times this week he’s down 75 pounds since the Citrus Bowl upset of South Carolina. He got home from that New Year’s Eve game, lugged his daughters’ suitcases — and himself — up a flight of stairs and thought, “Whoa.”
“I gotta do something here,” he admitted that day.
Bielema has stopped eating after 5 p.m. He’s taking walks and doing cardio twice a day. He’s hoping to shed another 50. Whether or not he can get there, it has been a life-changing endeavor.
And life is good for a coach coming off his first 10-win season since 2011 (when Wisconsin won 11) and Illinois’ first since 2001. Heading into Year 5 with the Illini, he has one of the Big Ten’s fastest-rising programs, a contract that last month was extended through 2030 and — what strange sorcery is this? — a 2026 recruiting class currently ranked by Rivals as the seventh-best in the country.
And how promising is 2025, meanwhile? By Illini standards, it’s in off-the-charts territory. As leading experts rolled out post-spring top 25s in recent weeks, the ubiquitous presence of Bielema’s squad was impossible to miss. The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel ranked the Illini 16th. ESPN’s Mark Schlabach had them 11th. Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt had them 10th. The Big Ten might be great again — 2024 was an absolute dream season for the conference — but only Penn State, Ohio State and Oregon are certain to begin the journey ranked higher than the Illini in the AP’s preseason poll.
Does anyone need a reminder that four Big Ten teams made the expanded, 12-team playoff last season?
“I get all that,” Bielema said outside an Illinois fan gathering at the Budweiser Brickhouse Tavern, adjacent to Wrigley Field. “But there’s no tackle, turnover or touchdown that carries over into this year. We still have to make sure our kids know they have to earn every one of those wins.”
According to ESPN, only Clemson (81%) and Arizona State (79%) have more returning production than Illinois (76%) among all FBS teams. It’s one thing to have a third-year starting quarterback in Luke Altmyer, one of the Big Ten’s most gifted pass rushers in Gabe Jacas and other potential all-league types scattered here and there. But the Illini have entire units — offensive line, linebacker, secondary — that might be, should be, too experienced and loaded not to deliver at high levels.
“I just think we consistently are doing things a lot better, which has allowed us to get better,” Bielema said. “Even in this [NIL and transfer portal] world we’re in now, even though it’s totally different.”
When Bielema showed up at Wrigley to lead the seventh-inning stretch as coach of Illinois for the first time, in 2021, major league stadiums had only recently left COVID-related crowd restrictions behind. Still, his presence didn’t create anything near the buzz it did on Tuesday.
“People want to have pride in their team,” he said. “I always say I want to give people a reason to wear their gear.”
It’s different for players to rep the Illini, too.
“The energy and vibe toward Illinois football, Illinois athletics, has totally shifted, flipped 180 [degrees],” Altmyer said.
No one involved wants to see it flip back. Bielema’s health aside, no one wants to see him and the Illini go backward.
Lord knows Illini fans have suffered through that sort of thing before.
There can’t possibly be a school that has been worse than Illinois at sustaining football success. We witnessed it most recently in 2023, when the Illini followed up on an eight-win season — a seeming breakthrough — with a 5-7 dud.
In 2019, the Illini finally got to a bowl game under then-coach Lovie Smith in his fourth season. A year later, they went 2-6 — all against Big Ten opponents — with only one of those losses being remotely competitive.
Tim Beckman got to a bottom-rung bowl game in his third season but then was fired for allegedly deterring players from reporting injuries and pressuring them to play hurt. So much for that, not that Beckman was anything to write home about strictly in a football sense.
In 2011, under Ron Zook, the Illini started 6-0 and rose to No. 16 nationally. Six losses in a row immediately followed. So long, Zookster.
Even Zook’s 2007 team, which won nine games and played in the Rose Bowl, couldn’t spark lasting momentum. In 2008, the Illini started at No. 20 but went 5-7.
And worst of all — that 10-win team in 2001 that reached the Sugar Bowl? Perhaps it was merely a rumor, because Ron Turner’s next three teams won five games, one game and three games.
Don’t make us go back even further, just know we could. The words “Lou” and “Tepper” come to mind.
If this year’s Illini actually take another step forward, it would mean the first back-to-back double-digit-win seasons in school history.
Goodness, how gratifying would that be for the coach?
“I get the question,” Bielema said, “but I’m 17 years into this. It’s a lot different than in the beginning, when you’re all about, ‘What can we accomplish? What can we win? What can we do?’ I kind of have done that a little bit. Now, it’s just fun to see the people around me have success, if that makes sense.”
Whatever lightens the load.