I'm tired of Wisconsin and Illinois leaning on their academics to complain about how bad their recruiting is. I know for a fact that Tim Beckman blamed their academics earlier this year on why it is so hard to recruit for Illinois, and I saw a lot (in 11W comments and elsewhere) about how one of the reasons Gary Anderson left Wisconsin was the academics made it difficult to recruit. While basing your school pride on the flawed US News Rankings is dumb, and choosing a school for your education based on flawed US News Rankings is dumb I am going to present them here for sake of argument

#13 Northwestern

#29 Michigan

#42 Illinois

#47 Wisconsin (but ranked right after Illinois because 42 is a 5 way tie) 

#48 Penn State

#54 Ohio State

#62 Purdue 

#62 Maryland 

#70 Rutgers 

#71 Iowa

#71 Minnesota 

#76 Indiana

#85 Michigan State

#99 Nebraska 

You can't seriously tell me that the difference between academics at the number 54 school in the country and the number 47 or 42 school in the country is so severe that it would affect recruiting. Michigan and Northwestern could have an argument, but Michigan has had great recruiting classes lately even with being ranked higher than they currently are (I'm fairly certain #29 is lower than in the past). Suck it up and admit that your recruiting isn't up to snuff because you're not recruiting hard enough, and you're not paying coaches enough. Illinois can have the excuse of lack of tradition, but I don't think Wisconsin can. If I was a recruit I wouldn't care about academics, if my degree looked shinier on the wall because it is from a public ivy even better.