Is Illinois ready for its breakthrough moment?
Bret Bielema can coach (and talk) with the best of them. As the SEC steals headline after headline, the Illini coach has fought the good fight for the Big Ten.
CHICAGO — What, you think Bret Bielema is opinionated now?
You should have seen him as a 36-year-old head coach. The man went 12-1 in his first season leading Wisconsin. He knew it all, or so he thought. Fortunately for him, Big Ten elder statesmen like Lloyd Carr and Jim Tressel were there to set him straight.
“They're like, you're going to be a steward of this profession,” Bielema recalled Tuesday ahead of Illini night at Wrigley Field. “For a long time, (Barry Alvarez) had told them that he thought I was going to be a decent head coach, and they just said, ‘Hey, you really got to look out for not just your team, but the better of college football.’ And so I think as I've come back, especially this last three or four years at Illinois, I'm in meetings, and there's a lot of good coaches, but some of these guys are in the younger version of themselves, and they just don't understand what's coming at them. So I really tried to stand up for the game a lot. A lot of those things.”
Then came the opening for some more fun.
“I’m just kind of having fun,” he added. “Like, I want 16 teams in the playoffs.”
Is that so, Coach?
And just how would that work if, say, the SEC refuses to go to nine conference games while the Big Ten chooses to remain at that number?
“I don't think there's any way we can do a 16-team playoff if they’re not at nine (conference) games, right?” Bielema said. “So we voted unanimously as Big Ten coaches to stay at nine and actually maybe have an SEC challenge. I was told that they voted unanimously to stay at eight and not play the Big Ten.”
He was just getting started.
“But then some people pipe off and say what they want to say because they want to look a certain way. Like, I get it, but like, I think until you get to nine for everybody, I don't think it can work.”
You can now add Brian Kelly to the list of victims of Bret’s Barbs this offseason.
Hey, it’s pretty good company.