Why Illinois is not the "next Indiana"

I'm suspicious about the hype surrounding the Illini going into the 2025 season.

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If you’ve been following college football media this offseason, you might have noticed that pundits are racing to crown the “next Indiana” for 2025. Given that the team being crowned is Illinois, I suppose their definition for “next Indiana” is a non-blue blood program that surges into a College Football Playoff bid, but that’s a myopic definition of “next Indiana.” The truth is that there most likely never was an “Indiana” before 2024, at least not in the last 10 seasons.

The chart below was created between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the postseason in December 2024. It shows every FBS team’s EPA/play along the X-axis for each season (2014-2024) and that same team’s EPA/play change from the previous season – how good is Team X on a play-by-play basis, and how much did Team X improve from the previous year?

As can be seen here, no team in the FBS since 2014 had improved as much as Indiana to the same quality as Indiana in 2024. In fact, no Power 5 program had ever improved as much as Indiana in a single offseason. There is a very likely chance, if the data was available historically, that it never happened before this age of college football either, given how the transfer portal has facilitated sudden roster change.

It was unprecedented improvement, and to compare any team to 2024 Indiana is to conveniently forget the very characteristic of the IU Football program that blue-blood fans and national pundits love to remind Indiana fans about – how low the Indiana Football program has been historically and how low it was going into that season. Indiana ended its 2023 season ranked No. 92 in ESPN SP+ ratings; Illinois ended 2024 ranked No. 31.

Of course, there’s the regime change as well. Curt Cignetti famously brought many of his primary playmakers from a top-25 James Madison team within a group of 30-plus transfers. He also plugged in both of his coordinators, his QBs coach (now OC at UCLA for 2025), and his strength and conditioning coach, none of whom performed at the Power 5 level before 2024. Here is how his Year One compared to Indiana head coaches historically, via ESPN SP+ historical ratings:

Illinois head coach Bret Bielema is entering his 5th season, and Illinois’ entire appeal is continuity from a 10-win 2024 season, as it returns the 3rd-most production in the FBS, according to ESPN. In this regard, it’s the exact opposite of Indiana entering 2024.

This isn’t anything against Illinois; it deserves credit for its 10-win season. It’s its first since 2001. But it simply isn’t Indiana.

With this said, though, Illinois and Indiana play in Bloomington during Week 4 of the 2025 season – a game that, if these teams match their expectations, could decide a CFP bid in December. So I want to get into the excitement around Illinois, and why I am suspicious.