A couple of hours after Illinois was finished kicking Michigan to the curb Saturday, Illini coach Bret Bielema dug into some dinner at Champaign Country Club. The man had earned a hot meal.
While Bielema decompressed with family and friends, he stole glimpses at a screen showing the game of the night in college football: top-ranked Texas against Georgia. The Longhorns were going down.
“Well,” Bielema said, “looks like we’re going to play No. 1.”
He was right about that. Oregon — up next for the Illini (2:30 p.m. Saturday, CBS) — officially would move up from No. 2 the next day.
There sure isn’t much time to celebrate with a road test like that looming.
But Bielema was ready to move on from Michigan, even though that win — and the whole scene at Memorial Stadium — added up to the best day in the fourth-year Illini coach’s time at the school. The stadium was completely full, with CBS in the house to show it off to viewers nationwide. The Illini won 21-7 and looked damn good doing it (and not just because of the highly popular throwback uniforms they were wearing). It was heady stuff.
All the tears, though — man.
Last Friday, driving to work, Bielema didn’t expect to pull into the parking lot and spend 20 minutes in the car crying. But then he heard it coming through the speakers: a hymn his mother had loved.
Marilyn Bielema died in 2022, two days before Illinois played Michigan. Four days after that game, Bielema lost his father-in-law, Greg Hielsberg, with whom he was close. Over the week before facing Michigan for the first time since then, Bielema became flooded with emotion that he just couldn’t turn off. He was thinking, too, about Betsy, his sister, who died tragically at 27 in 1990 — shattering news that Bielema, then an Iowa defensive tackle, received while his team was celebrating an upset win against Michigan.
Bielema addressed his players at the start of last week and admitted to them that he was “battling some demons.”
After the win in Champaign, he said, choking up as he had several times already, “This [Michigan] game has always had a lot of things around it that have been tugging on my heart.”
There isn’t always much time for reflection or grieving, either, in his crazy line of work. That’s true no matter what team is next on the schedule.
But Michigan week was cathartic for Bielema — which likely was just what he needed — and it was quickly on to the Ducks from there. On to attempting to figure out how to defend a team led by quarterback Dillon Gabriel, one of the leading contenders for the Heisman Trophy. On to preparing his team for Thursday’s 2,000-plus-mile trip to Eugene, Ore., and for the environment at Autzen Stadium, which is unlike any place else.
The Illini are 6-1 and ranked No. 20. They still have four games — at home against Minnesota and Michigan State, at Rutgers and against Northwestern at Wrigley Field — that they’ll be favored to win. The opportunity to put together a great Illinois season, which would be ever so rare, is palpable.
On the other hand is the nagging possibility the Illini — 21½-point underdogs — will take their longest trip of the season just to get run off the field.
“But I like our guys,” Bielema said Monday. “I like our crew. …
“How we play is going to be in our hands.”
As it turns out, this will be the 54-year-old’s 200th game as a head coach.
“I’ve once again proved to myself that I’m getting old,” he said.
It sure does go by fast.