A decision looming for huge Illinois football recruiting target

Illinois football has officially entered a big week, as there are some huge recruits who will make a decision in the coming days.

As of right now, the Illini sit with 13 commitments and a national recruiting rank of No. 48 in the country. Bret Bielema and the Illinois coaching staff have already landed multiple defensive backs, and we are looking to land a big in-state piece for the secondary.

Charles Bass has been an Illinois target for quite some time. We were one of his first scholarship offers back in May 2022. Since then, the relationship has built, and now Illinois is one of the top schools for his commitment.

Illinois made Bass’ top four, along with Missouri, Kansas State, and Arkansas, and he was originally supposed to commit back on July 1. That commitment was then pushed back to Wednesday, July 10.

This would be a big get for the Orange and Blue. All four recruiting sites have a different rating for Bass, but Rivals checks in with the highest opinion of the talented safety. They have him as a four-star recruit who is the No. 97 player in the class of 2025. He is also the No. 9 safety in the country and the No. 5 player coming out of the state of Illinois.

The Illinois football class of 2025 needs more talent like Charles Bass to bolster the national recruiting ranking

Recruiting ebbs and flows but for some reason, the Illinois football team hasn’t been able to manage to get over the hump and be one of the top 30 teams in the country when it comes to pulling in the big recruits.

Ron Zook was the last great recruiter for the Illini, but he wasn’t a great coach. But just landing solid talent as Zook did enabled Illinois to get to the Rose Bowl. Since then, the Illini haven’t been able to secure top talent in the country.

Under Bielema, things seem to have gotten slightly better. The two recruiting classes prior to Bielema arriving in Champaign, Illinois ranked No. 66 and No. 70 in the country. He then came in and landed the No. 53 class in 2022, the No. 40 class in 2023, and the No. 46 class in 2024.

Improvements have been made when it comes to recruiting. Adding a player like Bass would continue those improvements. Having three straight top-50 recruiting classes would be nice. What would be even nicer, and would make us a bit more relevant nationally, is starting to land top-30 classes. Bass would help us come closer to that goal.