...football players too, and a lot of schools reside in cities where there are simply a whole lot more financial opportunities for NIL.
I keep seeing people talk about embracing the portal and NIL, and all of that, and it sounds great, but for me it just seems like the newest iteration of the 8-ball we reside behind in recruiting.
I liked the Bielema hire because I thought it meant we were going to pick a viable lane and stay generally in it... and then we went and hired an OC who... well... ground covered.
I do think a large part of the problem is the recruiting dropoff - OL especially - late in Lovie's time. These rebuilds always have some kind of significant roster hole associated with them - Lovie had the same thing in 2017 and went uber-young. It kinda paid off (kinda?), but ultimately when it all went wrong (for various reasons), we are right back to where we were then - the older guys left and the void came in.
Which comes back to portal and NIL. It's my understanding we put the lion's share of those resources into keeping a few key players around. If that is indeed the case, and that's the extent of our NIL power in football, we are not serious about being a football program.
I don't know where to get the money when people just don't want to give it at the same pace other alumni groups do, but that's the reality - we are not a serious football program. We pay our employees well and hope they can make chicken salad out of chicken shit, but everybody else is fishing the same pond with more bait on the hook.
So here's the real question - programs who have marked disadvantages but are successful anyway find ways to zag when everybody else zigs. How does Illinois zig in a Big Ten environment in which every school is using $100 bills as TP?