Ep. 1178 - Scott Dochterman on the state of college football, the Big Ten and the Illini
Illini Inquirer Podcast: An Illinois Fighting Illini athletics podcast
247Sports, Illinois, Illinois Football, Illinois Basketball, Illinois Athletics, College Football, C
4.9 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Athletic's Scott Dochterman joins Illini Inquirer's Jeremy Werner to discuss the state of college football and tectonic shifts in the sport. Dochterman discusses the push to expand the College Football Playoff to 24 teams and the rising cost of rosters, and then he gives his thoughts on Illinois football under Bret Bielema and the top stories for the 2026 Big Ten football season.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today on the online inquire podcast, let's zoom out a little bit on the state of college football, Scott Docterman from The Athletic, one of the best national |
| 0:21.8 | writers and reporters out there. He joins us to break down all the things happening in college |
| 0:27.2 | football right now. We've had spring meetings in the big conferences, the SEC, Big 10, Big 12, |
| 0:32.7 | all of that, and a lot of thoughts and opinions about where college sports and college football especially |
| 0:39.0 | go from here should the college football playoff expand to 24 bret beoma and almost the |
| 0:44.1 | entire big 10 think so the SEC maybe not so much what's the future of the cost of rosters in |
| 0:52.3 | college football which have just exploded here recently. How are we |
| 0:57.0 | raining this in? Should it be rained in? What is the future of that? And then we actually |
| 1:01.3 | talk some football. Where does Illinois football kind of fit in? Is this a good thing? All of this |
| 1:06.2 | chaos. It seems like it's been pretty good for Illinois athletics as you've seen basketball and |
| 1:11.6 | football rise. And what are the big storylines for Big Ten football in 2026? Scott Docterman |
| 1:17.9 | breaks it all down for us. Again, one of the better national writers and reporters in the |
| 1:23.5 | country. He's based out of Iowa, but now is expanded to be one of the national riders. And one of |
| 1:29.0 | my favorite guys to follow in the sport and just a good guy. So it was good to catch up with Scott Docterman. |
| 1:34.8 | He's coming up next right here on the Alana Inquirer podcast. This episode of the Alina Inquirer |
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