CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Bret Bielema boarded a plane bound for California, days before Christmas. The Illinois coach needed to see his left tackle.
A federal judge issued a ruling in December that gave junior college transfers more runway to continue their NCAA careers. The injunction applied to players like J.C. Davis, Illinois’ offensive lineman who would have been out of eligibility if not for that court ruling.
Bielema flew to visit Davis at his home in Oakland. He pitched the idea of Davis putting the NFL on hold, returning to Illinois and improving his draft grade. Davis embraced the plan. He’ll protect quarterback Luke Altmyer’s blindside for another year as a 320-pound pillar of what Bielema believes “could be one of the best offensive lines in college football.”
Herein lies the roadmap of how Illinois positioned itself as a College Football Playoff contender for 2025, complete with a No. 12 ranking in the US LBM Coaches Poll, its highest preseason rank since 1990.
“We retained our best players,” Bielema says.
The Illini didn’t go on a player-buying spree, but they kept players like Altmyer and Davis. A stockpile of proven veterans, paired with an established coaching staff, remains a pathway to success amid college football’s transfer-fueled landscape.
By Bielema’s counting, the Illini return their best five players. Sixteen starters return from the team that finished 10-3.
That includes Altmyer, who enters his third season as Illinois’ starting quarterback. The fifth-year senior would have commanded interest in the transfer market, but Bielema told reporters in April there was a “zero point zero” percent chance Altmyer would transfer.
For Illinois, those proved ideal odds.
For Bielema, an Illinois native who played at Iowa and forged his career in the Midwest before getting fired as Arkansas coach, consider this his brilliant Big Ten homecoming.
“When we had it going in my past, we could play with anybody,” Bielema said, a nod to his 68-24 record at Wisconsin, where he coached the Badgers to two Rose Bowl appearances.
“Last year, at the end of the year, we could play with anybody.”
Can Illinois follow Indiana into College Football Playoff?
On the surface, Illinois draws comparisons to 2024 Indiana, which sprang up and crashed the playoff party. They’re basketball schools with limited football pedigree.
Dig deeper, and the threads come apart. Indiana’s Curt Cignetti built his playoff team with a cast of transfers from Group of Five schools. Bielema, by comparison, grew this roster over a span of years, at a job tailormade for this pig farmer’s son from Prophetstown, a small town in northwest Illinois.
Bielema came of age during a strong period in Illini athletics. Illinois basketball crested in the 1980s and spawned the Flyin’ Illini. Illinois football produced more winning seasons than not in the ‘80s, including a Rose Bowl trip.
“I was an Illinois fan,” Bielema says, before he became a Hawkeye.
Never mind his years in Iowa, because Bielema fits Illinois like a horseshoe on an empty stomach, or a cold Stag after a deer hunt.
As Bielema worked at other Midwest outposts earlier in his career, he told himself that Illinois could become something, if it ever signed enough top in-state talent. He’s made that a reality. Four of Illinois’ starting offensive linemen hail from state high schools. Better yet, every starting lineman is a junior or senior.
Illinois’ offensive and defensive lines constitute the program’s bedrock. That’s not lip service. Consider how the Illini travel.
“When we get on a plane, nobody sits in first class but linemen,” said Bielema, himself a big man. “I want people to know when they walk on a plane, that’s what we are.”
Bielema has this theory about big fellas. Their utility extends beyond protecting a quarterback or plugging an A-gap.
“When big people talk, people listen,” Bielema says.
When Bielema talks, keep the cameras rolling.
Bret Bielema’s mentality traces to career as Iowa walk-on
There’s this old story about Bielema that’s too amusing to not ask about, so I inquired about the details as we talked this spring in the Illinois coach’s office.
What was it Bielema, as an Iowa senior nose guard, said to Iowa State coach Jim Walden on the field after the Hawkeyes beat the Cyclones in 1992?
“I said, ‘You’ve been a pri**,’” Bielema concedes.
As in, the word for a male body part that rhymes with trick.
“What’s worse is, I repeated it,” Bielema says. “There was a camera on me the second time, not the first time.”
Bielema sent Walden a telegram apologizing days later, and the two would cross paths regularly after Bielema began his coaching career.
“Funny fact of that is, coach Walden and I ended up having a pretty good relationship,” Bielema says.
Walden, for his part, told ESPN in 2015 that he and Bielema later laughed about the incident.
“Bret is strung to a different wire,” Walden told ESPN. “I had no reason to hold it against him. I was well known for saying what I thought. Maybe that’s why he thought he could say it to me.”
Strung to a different wire? A man who speaks his mind?
Yeah, that’s Bielema.
As Arkansas coach, he called a postseason win against rival Texas “borderline erotic.”
Bielema started a borderline kerfuffle and set South Carolina coach Shane Beamer’s blood to boil when their teams met in a New Year’s Eve bowl game. Bielema, who says he was miffed about a Gamecocks kickoff return strategy, gestured toward the South Carolina sideline during an injury timeout. Beamer became so enraged that multiple South Carolina staffers had to restrain their diminutive coach from charging toward Bielema. Fortunately for Beamer, his staffers held him back.
Borderline comical, really.
This offseason, Bielema ripped Jim Harbaugh, cast some veiled shade at LSU’s Brian Kelly, and he openly challenged the SEC to beef up its conference schedule.
Part of Bielema’s offseason chirping, he admits, came as a design to attract spotlight for his team. It worked. The Illini attained their best preseason ranking in 35 years.
An offseason theme at Illinois: Program consistency
The best Illinois seasons typically emerge after a lack of preseason expectations. The Illini never have achieved back-to-back seasons with at least nine victories. Making players aware of the program’s history became an offseason point of emphasis.
“For every successful season that Illinois has had, there’s been a season of disappointment (that followed),” defensive coordinator Aaron Henry said. “When you’re trying to break a cycle, you have to remind people of that.”
Bielema tells his players to keep a chip on both shoulders.
“Not just one,” Bielema said. “We’ve got to have it on both. That’s the only way Illinois can survive.”
Bielema needed that mentality to succeed as a walk-on at Iowa. He didn’t know such a thing as a ninth-string player existed until he arrived in Iowa City and saw the depth chart posted in the locker room.
“There were only nine levels, and I was on the bottom line,” Bielema said. “I just kind of knew at that time, the only place I had to go was up, and the only way to get there was hard work.”
By his senior year, Bielema’s teammates had named him a co-captain. He made 37 tackles that season.
Bielema showed his grit at Iowa, but his mentality took root in Illinois.
Bielema put sweat equity into this state, long before he became the Illini coach. He grew up playing high school football on Friday nights, before helping with the hogs on the farm when the sun rose on Saturdays.
“I’d never been on a plane until I went to college. We’d never been on vacation,” he said. “My dad never took a vacation until my sophomore year, when we went to the Rose Bowl.”
When Bielema was in seventh grade, his brother, Barry, suffered injuries in a vehicle accident that demanded his parents’ attention. That left older brother Bart and Bret to tend to 2,500 pigs.
“My older brother used to pick me up every day at like 4:30 in the morning,” Bielema said, “and we had to go take care of everything before I got on the 7 o’clock bus.
“That (farm) was our family’s livelihood. My brother and I really kind of strapped it up, and, for about six months, we kind of took full authority.”
If hard work is the way to get somewhere, Bielema learned he can handle that.
Illinois has path to College Football Playoff
No database compiles third-party NIL deals or tracks teams’ roster payrolls, so approximations are the best we can do. By Bielema’s estimation, Illinois ranked last in the Big Ten in roster compensation two years ago, when his Illini finished 5-7.
“I don’t need to be No. 1,” Bielema said, “but I sure can’t be (last).”
He’s not anymore. Bielema figures Illinois’ roster compensation is in the middle of the Big Ten. Bielema’s three years working for NFL coaching staffs after his Arkansas firing influence how he leads at Illinois, down to how dollars are allocated to players.
Put the dollars and formulas aside, though, and you’ll hear in Bielema’s voice how much he likes this group and believes in their potential.
Take the case of edge rusher Gabe Jacas and defensive back Xavier Scott. Bielema signed them as three-star recruits. They developed into standouts who outperformed their recruiting profile, a microcosm of this roster.
“I’ve never been at a blue blood,” Bielema said, and, in recruiting, “I really don’t care what other people see, I just worry about what I know.”
If Bielema knows he’s gained the upper hand, expect to hear about it from this coach who wears a chip on both shoulders and instilled some swagger to a program that needed it.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.