Part of Beckman's issue is that he came from a school in Toledo where he had a great recruiting base...and he wasn't even that great at Toledo. He wasn't having to run up against the big boys for recruits. He was having to out muscle schools like Bowling Green and Miami of Ohio. He jumped to Illinois from Ohio at a really rough time to try and recruit Big10 level players from his strongest area. Urban Meyer and Brian Kelly run that state right now. James Franklin going to PSU really hurts as well. In a few years Chuck Martin will have Miami turned around and he'll keep kids in the state too. The state of Illinois isn't a tremendous state for recruiting anymore(depth wise) and it's tough to get kids from Chicago to qualify.
I was never enamored with the Beckman hire to begin with. But a school at the level of Illinois in today's CFB environment is really hamstrung. Unless you find an alum like NW did in Fitzgerald it's not a destination job. It's a stepping stone or reclamation project job. You either need to catch a coach like Zook, O'Leary, etc looking for a second chance or latch onto the next hot name from the MAC, WAC, FCS, etc and ride the success for a few years like Cincy did with Brian Kelly or hope a coach like Chris Peterson stays around for years for no real reason.