Illinois’ Bret Bielema takes shots at SEC, Greg Sankey wanting ‘to live in 2005 forever’

CHICAGO — Illinois’ Bret Bielema, batting leadoff Tuesday among coaches at Big Ten football media days, lauded the SEC but said his former conference and commissioner Greg Sankey are holding onto the past.

“I know he’s gotta protect the SEC, and they kind of want to live in 2005 forever,” Bielema said of Sankey, who’s been SEC commissioner since 2015.

Last week, Sankey said at SEC media days that schools in his conference could consider a breakaway from other leagues in college football if the sport’s structural model doesn’t shift in a direction favored by the SEC.

The SEC, according to Bielema’s rhetoric, is living in the past with its talk about winning titles in an age when the transfer portal and player compensation didn’t dominate the sport.

The SEC won seven consecutive national championships from 2006 to 2012 and six of the first nine titles in the College Football Playoff. The Big Ten has since won the past three championships as the influence of the transfer portal and payment of players has grown.

Transfers and money paid legally to athletes have reshaped the game, Bielema said when asked to explain his commentary on the SEC.

“The whole world changed,” he said. “I mean, it’s overly obvious to say that. But I think anything to predate that is just a different time in college football. It just is. It’s a different world, man.”

Bielema’s quarterback, Katin Houser, spent two seasons at Michigan State and two at East Carolina. Houser would not have landed at Illinois if not for the changing nature of the sport, according to Bielema.

“I know that,” the coach said. “Neither would my left tackle, my left guard, my center and right tackle. (They) wouldn’t be here, playing for me… Anything beyond that is nonsense. That’s where I’m coming from.”

Bielema, entering his sixth season with the Illini, won 29 of 63 games in five seasons as Arkansas’ coach before the school fired him in 2017. He is 105-50 in 12 years as a head coach in the Big Ten and directed Illinois to 19 wins over the 2024 and 2025 seasons, its highest two-year total ever.