Every program has a point where you know what the ceiling and floor are going to be for that particular coaching staff. Illinois football is at that point with Bret Bielema.

In three seasons and one game with the Illini, Bielema has a 19-19 record. That doesn’t sound great for a lot of teams, but for the Orange and Blue, a .500 record over three years is better than most.

If Bielema were to retire now, he would finish with the 14th-best winning percentage in program history. Bielema has a better winning percentage than any non-interim Illinois head coach since the turn of the century.

I would say the first three seasons under his watch have been successful to what Illinois had before Bielema. But we are at a pivotal point in the Bielema era.

No. 19 Kansas comes to town on Saturday. I believe this is the biggest game of the Bielema era right now.

Why is it the biggest game? There are the obvious answers. It’s the first sellout game since the 2016 game against North Carolina. It’s against a ranked opponent, and there are endless hopes for what this season could be if Illinois wins the game.

But the significance of this game goes beyond those superficial reasons. I believe this game marks a point in Bielema’s coaching tenure where we either remain a mediocre program that only hopes to win six games a year, or we can take the next step with Bielema and the coaching staff.

Illinois fans know the bottom for Bielema as a coach. We’re not going to hit the bottom. Five wins is probably the bottom for this program every year. But we don’t know what the ceiling is for him and his coaching staff.

A loss on Saturday will show us that ceiling. A loss on Saturday shows us that we’re not playing with the big boys and that we’re a middle-of-the-pack program hoping to beat a ranked opponent every once in a while. That would be the ceiling for the Bielema era with a loss.

But with a win, the ceiling disappears into the sunset. You won’t be able to see the ceiling because it’s so high. A win over Kansas tells college football, recruits and fans that Illinois is a program that can compete with the big boys in the game.

What are some of the other big games Bielema played during his time with the Illini? You can go back to the game against No. 7 Penn State in October 2021. It was the nine-overtime win, 20-18.

That game was fun and extremely memorable, but Illinois was 2-5 going into that matchup. This is the type of game I was referring to earlier. We can have random wins over ranked opponents, but I don’t want those wins to be random. I want those wins to be habitual.

Another matchup that comes to mind is the 2022 game against No. 3 Michigan. This was a big game, but Illinois had lost its previous two games and dropped out of the top 25. We already had seven wins and we didn’t make any of the big bowl games.

A win over the No. 3 team in the country would have been great, but in the grand scheme of things, a win over Michigan puts us at nine wins and a slightly better bowl game.

And then there’s the bowl game that season against No. 24 Mississippi State. This is also a big game, but Illinois had a lot of opt-outs in this game. While winning a bowl game would have been great, it wouldn’t have been a defining moment for the Illinois coaching staff.

The gravity of this game against Kansas on Saturday cannot go unnoticed. It will be a packed house on a big stage in primetime. Illinois has a stigma of being a mediocre team at best. Bielema has a chance to not only consolidate what he is building in Champaign, but he also has a chance to take Illinois to a nationally competitive level. This is without a doubt the biggest game of the Bielema era.