Bielema on NIL
The world that has been created through NIL, revenue share and the portal that we operate in now has erased the limitations to a certain level,” Bielema told The Athletic on Saturday, a few days after his Illini defeated Tennessee in the Music City Bowl. “I know this: Before I came here, we’d never beaten an SEC team in our history, and we’ve now beaten two back-to-back (in bowl games).”
The reality is this, there were some very famous, very successful coaches that were having a lot of success when the NIL was illegal,”
Before NIL and the portal became so prolific, Alabama and Georgia — the SEC’s two biggest heavyweights — stockpiled talent. That is much harder to do now.
We flipped a kid from Alabama on signing day,” said Bielema. “When has that happened? When it’s equal, it’s everybody’s game, man.”