How new OU athletics director Roger Denny helped Bret Bielema turn around Illinois football

Bret Bielema and Roger Denny didn’t always get along.  Bielema, who has been the head coach at Illinois since 2021, is like most college football head coaches. He likes things a certain way. And having had tremendous success as a football coach both at the college and professional level for over 30 years, he knows what it takes to build a winning program.  But he will also be the first to tell you that his success is also due to the people around him. And for him at Illinois, where he’s won 19 games the last two seasons, Denny was arguably the most important person he has worked with over the last four years.  “This is my third stint as a head coach,” Bielema told SoonerScoop. “Been a part of a couple of other programs as an assistant. I was in the NFL with the Patriots and the Giants. And the thing that I've always admired is that places that have great success understand urgency. You can't wait for it to happen. You gotta make it happen. Roger just always knew the path to take to get us where we needed to be. And to be quite honest, he and I got some pretty good pissing contests, right? Like, he wasn't just a ‘yes sir’ — he was in charge of the books, so he always knew the financial responsibilities.  “We want to build sustainable success here at Illinois. We won more games in the last two years than at any time in the history of the program. And I really believe that what Roger was able to do was as big a part of that as anything.”