Every program has a point where you know what the ceiling and floor are going to be for that particular coaching staff. Illinois football is at that point with Bret Bielema.
Through three seasons and one game with the Illini, Bielema has a record of 19-19. That doesn’t sound great to a lot of teams out there, but for the Orange and Blue, having a .500 record over three years is better than most.
In fact, if Bielema retired right now, he would finish with the No. 14 win percentage in program history. Bielema has a better win percentage than any non-interim Illinois head coach since the turn of the century.
I would say the first three seasons under his tutelage have been successful with what Illinois had before Bielema. But we are at a pivotal point in the Bielema era.
No. 19 Kansas comes to town on Saturday. I believe, at this point in time, this is the biggest game of the Bielema era.
Why is it the biggest game? There are the obvious answers. It is the first sellout game since the 2016 contest against North Carolina. It is against a ranked opponent, and there are endless hopes of what this season could be if Illinois wins the game.
But the meaning of this game is more than just those surface reasons. I believe this game is a point in Bielema’s coaching tenure where we either stay a mediocre program that just hopes to win six games a year or if we can take the next step with Bielema and the coaching staff.
Illinois fans know the floor for Bielema as a coach. We aren’t going to hit rock bottom. Five wins is likely the floor for this program every year. But we don’t know what the ceiling is for him and his coaching staff.
A loss on Saturday will show us that ceiling. A loss on Saturday shows us that we aren’t playing with the big boys and that we are a middle-of-the-pack program that hopes to knock off a ranked opponent every once in a great while. That would be the ceiling for the Bielema era with a loss.
But with a win, the ceiling disappears into the sunset. You won’t be able to see the ceiling because it is so high. A win over Kansas will let college football, recruits, and fans know that Illinois is a program that can compete with the big boys of the sport.
Other big Illinois football games during the Bret Bielema era don’t compare to this matchup against Kansas
What are some of the other big Bielema contests during his time with the Illini? You can go back to the game against No. 7 Penn State in October 2021. It was the nine overtime win, 20-18.
That game was fun and extremely memorable, but Illinois was 2-5 entering that matchup. This is the type of game that I was referencing earlier. We can have these random wins over ranked opponents, but I don’t want those victories to be random. I want those wins to be the usual.
Another matchup that comes to mind is the game against No. 3 Michigan in 2022. This was a big game, but Illinois had dropped the previous two contests and fell out of the top 25. We already had seven wins, and we weren’t making one of the big bowl games.
A win over the No. 3 team in the country would have been big, but in the grand scheme of things, a win against Michigan gets us to nine wins and a slightly better bowl game.
And then there is the bowl game that season against No. 24 Mississippi State. This is a big game as well, but Illinois had a lot of opt-outs in this contest. While winning a bowl game would have been awesome, that wouldn’t have been a defining moment for the Illinois coaching staff.
The gravitas of this game against Kansas on Saturday can’t go unstated. It is going to be a packed house on a big stage in primetime. Illinois has a stigma of being a mediocre team at best. Bielema has a chance to not only solidify what he is building in Champaign, but he has a chance to put Illinois on a nationally competitive level. Hands down, this is the biggest game of the Bielema era.