The Illinois Fighting Illini kick off the 2025 football season just nine nights from now. All the anticipation, excitement and preseason posturing is leading up to the season opener versus the Western Illinois Leathernecks on Aug. 29.
And while the Illinois-WIU matchup isn’t glamorous, it’s still football, and it’s still noteworthy.
The Illini will start the season ranked #12 in the AP poll. And they’ll come into Memorial Stadium next Friday night as an incredible, jaw-dropping, ridiculously huge favorite:
Yep! Illinois is the biggest favorite of any team in Week One. Madness. And before I could even get this column from my brain to my laptop…the betting line went UP.
That’s not a typographical error. Illini football is favored to win a game by FORTY-SIX AND A HALF points. I can’t remember any Illinois football game having that kind of lopsided spread, even during the woebegone days of Lovie Smith & Tim Beckman.
Per ESPN, the total is 63.5, which would make the expected final score around 56-8. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that Illinois is projected to be really good, and WIU is projected to be really bad.
This won’t be a matter of whether or not the Illini will win — the real question is whether or not Bret Bielema leaves his starters in the game long enough to get to that number. By now we should all be familiar with the expression “good teams win, great teams cover,” but the coaching staff cares not about your betting slip.
Illinois’ season opener against WIU will be broadcast on Peacock. Kickoff is scheduled for 6:30 PM CT.
