{"id":61669,"date":"2025-07-13T07:30:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T07:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/61669\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T07:30:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T07:30:12","slug":"four-star-st-louis-safety-jacob-eberhart-commits-to-illini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/61669\/","title":{"rendered":"Four-star St. Louis safety Jacob Eberhart commits to Illini"},"content":{"rendered":"

Illinois<\/a><\/b> football recruiting is back in business in a big way. <\/b>After a few tough losses for top targets last month \u2014 TE JC Anderson<\/a><\/b> to Ole Miss, TE\u00a0Mack Sutter<\/a><\/b> to Alabama<\/a><\/b> and WR\u00a0Owen Cabell<\/a><\/b> to Alabama \u2014 Illinois landed another marquee addition to the Class of 2026<\/a> with four-star Composite safety Jacob Eberhart<\/a><\/b> giving his verbal commitment to Illinois on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Eberhart, whose late father Jason played at Illinois from 1997-2000, choosing Illinois over Oklahoma<\/a><\/b>, Missouri<\/a><\/b> and Nebraska<\/a><\/b>, among\u00a031 total Power Four offers, is a reminder of the Illini’s growing strength in recruiting. As other schools filled up with commitments during the last month, the Illini class slipped from No. 8 in the team recruiting rankings<\/a> following Nick Hankins<\/a><\/b>‘ commitment to No. 23 in the team rankings<\/a> before Eberhart’s commitment. Yet, this class of 23 commitments<\/a> is still stacking up well nationally and in the Big Ten, and this class is raising the bar for Illinois.<\/p>\n

Eberhart is the second-highest-rated prospect in the Composite rankings (No. 309) that Illinois has landed so far in the class, and the Illini built strong relationship with the Illini legacy’s family and people around him, including former Mizzou star Markus Golden<\/a><\/b>, a close advisor of Eberhart’s who played for Bielema with the New York Giants.<\/p>\n

Eberhart is also the fifth Composite four-star prospect to commit to Illinois this class, joining Hankins, WR Nasir Rankin<\/a><\/b>, OL Kai Pritchard<\/a><\/b> and LB Cam Thomas<\/a><\/b>. That’s the most Composite four-star prospects Illinois has had in a single class since 2009, a haul that included Terry Hawthorne<\/a><\/b> and Nathan Scheelhaase<\/a><\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Illinois football recruiting is back in business in a big way. After a few tough losses for top…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":61670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-61669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114844757088010670","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}