Former Wisconsin Head Coach Jim Leonhard Joins Illinois As Assistant

Illinois football announced it is hiring former Wisconsin interim head coach Jim Leonhard as a senior football analyst.

Leonhard was a longtime safety who went to college at Wisconsin and played 10 seasons in the NFL. After retiring in 2016, Leonhard joined Wisconsin as a defensive backs coach, and he was promoted to defensive coordinator just a year later.

In 2023, Wisconsin promoted Leonhard to interim head coach midseason after firing Paul Chryst in October. As head coach, Leonhard led Wisconsin to a 4–3 regular season record and a bowl game win in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl vs. Oklahoma State.

After the season, Wisconsin hired former Cincinnati head coach Luke Fickell to take over the program, but they gave Leonhard the opportunity to return in some role. Instead, Leonhard chose to move on from the Badgers after the bowl game despite seven years on the coaching staff.

Illinois head coach Brett Bielema also used to coach Wisconsin, first as a defensive coordinator and then as head coach for seven seasons. Bielema and Leonhard overlapped for one year at Wisconsin in 2004, when Bielema was the defensive coordinator and Leonhard was a senior safety.

Bielema is entering his third season as Illinois’s head coach, having gone 13–12 in his first two seasons with an 0–1 record in bowl games.