LAS VEGAS — I-L-L …
… C-F-P?
More so than ever, the College Football Playoff is the No. 1 topic in the sport. Also more so than ever — or for the first time in what feels like forever, at least — Illinois football has serious buzz, momentum and mojo.
Dare we actually go ahead and put those two things together — the ever-evolving playoff and the risen-from-the-dead Illini?
We do, and why not?
“There’s certainly a swagger, a confidence, an energy behind that Block ‘I’ that we wear and represent, that catches people’s eye at this point,” quarterback Luke Altmyer said. “We’re being talked about in a great way. We won 10 games [in 2024] and have a lot of momentum moving forward. People notice that, I think. We put people on notice, for sure.”
It was a different kind of first day at the Big Ten’s annual preseason gathering of coaches, top players and media. For one thing, this year’s event is at the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Vegas Strip, perhaps the only spot left on the U.S. map to which the conference has yet to officially expand. For another, Illinois — which took its turn Tuesday along with Indiana, Maryland, Nebraska, Rutgers and defending national champ Ohio State — has become one of the cool kids, an “it” program.
When the preseason AP Top 25 comes out next month, usual suspects Ohio State, Penn State and Oregon will be ranked near the top. But not far behind them will be Illinois, which will be ranked better than 20th going into the season for the first time since 1990. That year, the Illini were 11th. This team almost surely will be in that neighborhood.
With a 12-team playoff, that puts the Illini right in the fan and media sweet spot for spirited speculation and epic expectations.
“Expectations are earned,” coach Bret Bielema cautioned. “They’re never given.”
Try telling that to his players, three of whom flew to the desert along with Bielema and some deep-pocketed donors on a private jet.
“[Non-playoff] bowl games are starting to kind of not be as important at this point in the world of college football,” Altmyer said. “If you’re not in that playoff, nobody cares. … You ask Ohio State that same question, yeah, it’s playoff or bust. That’s where we want to be. We want to be in that playoff.”
It’s a heady time for the Illini and a gratifying moment for Bielema, who’s coming off his first double-digit-win season since 2011, when he was at Wisconsin. The fifth-year, 55-year-old Illini coach, owner of a recently signed contract extension through 2031, is wearing it well, having shed approximately 75 pounds and walking around with a Citrus Bowl ring the size of a Buick on his right hand. The ring celebrates the upset of South Carolina last New Year’s Eve and, in a lovely touch, is inscribed with the initials “DD” in honor of late assistant Dana Dimel, who died four weeks before that game.
After flying here Sunday, the whole Illinois contingent sat over plates of pasta at Piero’s off the strip and took turns speaking about how much this whole experience has meant to them. If that’s not sentimental enough for you, Bielema even strolled through the Wynn hotel with wife Jen so that he could drink her in from the very vantage point at which he saw her for the first time — he was playing blackjack — on the night they met.
It feels good to be the Orange and Blue these days.
“For sure, the relevance has changed,” Bielema said.
But this is Illinois football we’re talking about, and that means a history of disappointments and disasters that can’t just be overlooked. The last three Illini teams to be ranked going in — in 2008, 2000 and 1994 — ended those seasons unranked. The 1990 team that went in ranked 11th ended up 25th.
Illinois’ football has long had a dysfunctional relationship with momentum. The last 10-win season before 2024 was in 2001, a ride that went all the way to the Sugar Bowl; the next three Illini teams won nine games combined. More recently, the 2023 Illini — coming off an 8-5 mini-breakthrough — flopped at 5-7.
“We haven’t always capitalized on those moments of success and made them springboards to even greater success,” athletic director Josh Whitman said, putting it mildly.
Is this time going to be different? Has Illini football come too far to roll over and die another sad, quiet, irrelevant death?
That old, tired excuse that it’s hard to sustain football success at Illinois doesn’t cut it anymore. Never should have.
“That’s something [Bielema] and I have focused on from our very first conversation,” Whitman said. “The very first time we spoke, we talked about that being the objective.”
It’s time to stop talking about it and start demonstrating it on the field.
Come to think of it, there’s still more than a month of offseason left to keep talking about it. Are we really talking about the playoff already?
We are. We’re talking about the playoff because it’s the be-all, end-all of the sport. And we’re talking about Illinois, which maybe, just maybe, is the real deal. A joining of the two sure would be something.