Well, that’s a relief. Three-star Lincoln-Way East offensive lineman Mason Halliman‘s commitment is welcome good news for Illinois football recruiting, which hadn’t had a commitment in two months and had experienced some tough losses during the last month, including Composite four-star quarterback Kamden Lopati flipping his commitment from Illinois to Michigan, some key targets committing elsewhere and some top in-state targets all but eliminating Illinois from consideration.
But Halliman is a big Big Ten win who shows that, no, Illinois football recruiting is not in shambles. Rather, the Illini still are drawing a lot of very talented recruits to campus and are still very capable of landing high-quality prep prospects.
Of course, even if the prep class is just 12-18 players in this class and prep recruiting prices are rising significantly, as Bret Bielema said last week, the Illini still have a lot of work to do in the next few months to set a fuller foundation in the Class of 2027 and stack another high-quality class on top of the program’s highest-rated class (2026) in more than a decade and a half.