There’s a new largest scoreboard in college football. The school that built it is dreaming bigger – The New York Times

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Towering above the south end zone at Gies Memorial Stadium stands college football’s new largest scoreboard, which serves as a symbol of a burgeoning gridiron renaissance.

Long known as a football underachiever, Illinois has posted a school-record 19 wins the last two seasons. A dormant fan base is now flocking to the venerable stadium with its marble columns. Thanks to the 16-million-pixel scoreboard rising tall from the flat land throughout Champaign-Urbana, the 102-year-old structure reflects the bubbly mood around the Illinois athletic department.

“The energy around all of this says it’s the place to be on Saturdays now,” said Illinois deputy athletic director Tom Michael, a former Illini men’s basketball player, “and that always hasn’t been the case for Illinois football.”

Just weeks before the Illini open the season against UAB, construction crews continued to put the finishing touches on a 17,315-square-foot marvel that stands 69 feet high, more than twice the size of the 31 rows of seats directly underneath it. It would take 1,621 60-inch televisions to cover the structure.

The next-biggest videoboard in college football belongs to Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium at 10,690 square feet. Purdue’s 8,461-square-foot display at Ross-Ade Stadium now ranks No. 3, less than half the size of Illinois’ behemoth.

“Nobody ever says, ‘I wish we would have gotten a smaller TV,’” Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman said. “As they showed us the different concepts, I just gravitated towards the biggest one, feeling like with that open end of the stadium and the opportunity we have to really change the environment through that element.”

The scoreboard is part of a $40 million “stadium four-pack” of upgrades that includes LED lighting, improved Wi-Fi and a booming sound system. There are new videoboards throughout the stadium, with ribbons above the student section and on the east and west grandstands. The changes might appear cosmetic, but they serve a purpose for this Big Ten charter member on an upward trajectory.

Illinois sold out all 42,000 season tickets — including 8,000 student tickets — in 2025, the first time in at least 20 years (the program never kept track previously). This year, demand was so high the department pushed the student allotment to 10,000, and it expects to sell 45,000 season tickets once the freshmen arrive.

But the ticket spike and scoreboard are just a portion of Illinois’ athletic revival. In September 2025, the school secured a $100 million donation from billionaire alum Larry Gies earmarked for Illini football. This spring, the men’s basketball team reached the Final Four for the first time in 21 years. Women’s basketball and other sports have qualified for national tournaments.

For the first time, the athletic department exceeded $200 million in revenue in the recently closed 2026 fiscal year.

Source: Daktronics

As the flagship institution of the country’s sixth-most populous state, and with Chicago located just two hours north, Illinois has rarely capitalized on the immense advantages of its location. Now, 10 years into Whitman’s tenure, the athletic department is starting to meet its potential.

Whitman calls his department “a net beneficiary” of the name, image and likeness era, and with 60,000 students on campus, the better Illinois becomes now, the more rewards could be ahead.

“For the first five or six years, we were selling the theoretical: This is what’s possible if we support this program,” Whitman said. “Now we’re able to demonstrate the actual, and not surprisingly, the actual is more palatable for people and makes it more real and more exciting.”

Everyone associated with Illinois athletics points to Whitman as the catalyst of the program’s success. Whitman, 48, serves as the Division I Council chair and has national leaders touting him as a future conference commissioner. But he’s an Illinois alum first. A former Illinois Academic All-American tight end and law school graduate, Whitman signed an extension this summer through 2036 with a base salary of $2.15 million and a $500,000 annual retention bonus.

“Man, when I heard him talk, and I heard him talk about sustainable success, and I heard him throw out things about support and of course that he played here, I had flashbacks to (former Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez),” football coach Bret Bielema said.

The AD and head coach had each gotten a recent lesson in humility at the time their careers intersected. Bielema was fired from Arkansas in 2017 and spent the next three seasons on NFL staffs. Whitman had hired Lovie Smith as football coach on his first day in 2016, but the Illini failed to gain momentum.

During a 63-0 loss to Iowa on Senior Day in 2018, the announced attendance was 33,313 for a stadium capacity of 60,670, but the actual number of tickets scanned that day was 14,076.

The program needed a jolt, and Bielema provided it. Over his five seasons as coach, attendance has risen 65 percent, with the stadium reaching 96.2 percent capacity last fall with 58,350 fans per game. Ticket revenue has jumped from $6.94 million in 2021 to $15.02 million in 2025.

The spark, Bielema said, came in 2024 when his squad hosted defending national champion Michigan on the 100th anniversary of Red Grange’s six-touchdown performance against the Wolverines. Illinois wore throwback uniforms and won 21-7 in front of a sellout crowd, the first time since 1991 that the Illini won a matchup of two ranked teams in Champaign. They won another last year, beating USC 34-32.

“It was the first time I felt a home-field advantage,” Bielema said about the Michigan victory.

Whitman and Bielema work in concert to build sustainability in Illinois’ football program. Bielema comes from what Whitman calls “the most decorated and successful coaching tree,” which makes him uniquely qualified to take lessons from Alvarez, Bill Belichick, Bill Snyder, Hayden Fry and Kirk Ferentz and apply them toward consistency.

Counting the recent two-year run, Illinois has enjoyed back-to-back winning seasons just twice since 1990.

“We’ve been to Rose Bowls, we’ve been to Final Fours, we’ve done some really good things, but we haven’t sustained it,” Whitman said. “We haven’t used those moments to create even bigger moments, and so how can this time be different?”

Illinois’ other sports also have responded with an uptick. During the 2019-20 men’s basketball season, the Illini earned $6.37 million in ticket sales. In 2024-25, that number rose to $14.23 million, just behind Indiana among Big Ten teams. This April, Illinois turned out in droves for the Final Four in Indianapolis. Whitman estimated that 40,000 Illini fans attended the national semifinal against UConn.

“It’s almost a Beatles-like existence when we go on the road,” Whitman said.

For now, the school’s two biggest sports feed off each other’s success. During the week of Big Ten media days, Bielema and men’s basketball coach Brad Underwood hopped in a car together and drove 50 miles to Decatur, Ill., for a fan event. Bielema bounced ideas off Underwood and “realized how much in line I was with him.”

The connection between the programs spills over to the new scoreboard: Men’s basketball player David Mirković suggested the athletic department show the movie “Air Bud” as part of a family fun night on Aug. 8. Fans collected autographs from football players and coaches, then gathered on the Gies Memorial Stadium turf to watch the golden retriever shoot some magical hoops.

#Illini debut the largest scoreboard in college football on Saturday

Illinois fans got to watch Air Bud — courtesy of David Mirkovic — and get autographs from the team

They traveled all over the Land of Lincoln to see it pic.twitter.com/ntDo2MLXDV

— Carson Gourdie (@GourdieReport) August 9, 2026

This fall, the Illini hope to showcase their own magic on a screen visible for miles around. Whitman cautions that the scoreboard is more than “a sideshow,” and any momentum built in football — and across the board — must be maintained.

“We just can’t allow ourselves to celebrate prematurely,” Whitman said. “The moment we become even moderately complacent, then we’re going to relinquish any ground that we’ve been able to gain here over the last several years.

“We spend a lot of time thinking about how to continue to push the bar higher, how to take these moments that we’re enjoying now and use them as a springboard to greater success in the future, and that really has been our sole focus.”