Illinois football finds a familiar home in College Football Playoff rankings

It took a little bit, but the Illinois football team has notched a spot in the most important ranking in the country.

Back in 2014, the College Football Playoff started with four teams. The top 25 featured some of the best programs in the country, which included the top four of Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, and Ohio State. If you noticed, the Illini are not on that list.

The CFP has not been friendly to the Orange and Blue. In fact, we never saw a spot in the CFP in the first eight seasons of its inception.

2022 came along and everything changed. Well, honestly, you can go back to December 2020 to find when everything for Illinois shifted. That is when Bret Bielema took over the program.

Just two short seasons later, Bielema had Illinois not only ranked in the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2011, we also made it in the first CFP rankings in program history. In that 2022 campaign, the Illini made it as high as No. 16 in the country.

In today’s College Football Playoff, being No. 16 would get you on the bubble, which is something I wasn’t sure Illinois could even achieve. Just making it into the top 25 back in 2022 was a big deal. Well, the Illini have done it again.

On Tuesday night, the third installment of the 2024 CFP Rankings was released. Illinois has now cracked the top 25, as we landed at No. 25.

Illinois football has a chance to climb in the College Football Playoff rankings in the coming weeks

It is a big deal that Illinois is back in the CFP rankings. Just think about where this program was just a few years ago. In the 10 seasons before Bielema, Illinois won a maximum of six games, and that only happened twice. That is a fan purgatory that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Illinois has now made the CFP rankings in two out of the four seasons Bielema has been at the helm. I think we can stay there for the rest of the 2024 campaign as well.

The final two games of the season for the Illini are very favorable. We play at Rutgers this weekend and then the final game of the season is up at Wrigley Field against Northwestern.

Those are two winnable games. Getting to nine wins hasn’t happened since the 2007 season. Getting inside the top 16 in the CFP rankings has never happened. Let’s win out and hope for chaos and see where this wild ride takes us.