Illinois is the fourth program in as many seasons for the well-traveled defensive lineman Tomiwa Durojaiye, who hopes Champaign-Urbana can be his first permanent college home.

CHAMPAIGN — Illinois defensive coordinator Aaron Henry can draw from his personal adolescence experience to answer to why this year, Bret Bielema’s program and his defense finally fit Tomiwa Durojaiye.

When you don’t have a choice, human beings will tend to make their current residence their home.

“He has nowhere to run now,” Henry said Monday in his weekly media conference inside Memorial Stadium. “Typically, when you stop running, you man up and grow in areas inside yourself where you know you need growth. From there, I think you’re capable of being the best player you can be.”

In so many ways, the pay-for-play and transfer era that has engulfed collegiate athletics and specifically football and men’s basketball has made the 21-year-old defensive lineman one of its poster children. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is Durojaiye’s fourth program in four years. Here has been Durojaiye’s college routine since signing with Kentucky as a three-star recruit in the 2022 recruiting class: enroll at a university, stay a few months, enjoy limited success on the football field, and enter transfer portal. And then rinse and repeat two more times at West Virginia and Florida State. Are their payouts for each of those moves? Yes, Durojaiye admitted as much in his local media. Durojaiye confirmed Wednesday in his first local media session during the 2025 season that he received a “significant NIL pay day” to be involved in the much-publicized, high-priced and ultimately disappointing transfer class produced by Florida State that led to the 2024 Seminoles finishing with a 2-10 record with only one win over a Football Bowl Subdivision opponent.

“Looking back, there wasn’t one specific thing I was looking for,” Durojaiye said about his constant bouncing around from college to college. “I was one of those guys who was convinced I would be one of those three (years) and out kind of players where you’ll have instant success. It doesn’t work that way. And then I had success at West Virginia and then I left things like NIL sidetrack me when I was probably in a good situation.”

Durojaiye had just three tackles, one tackle for loss, and one sack in the 2024 campaign, where he participated in 32 total snaps in four games for FSU. In the 52-3 win over Western Illinois on Friday night in the 2025 season opener, Durojaiye was on the field for 24 snaps of action and produced four tackles and a sack.

Is there stability, consistency and development while hopping from place to place every six to eight months? Obviously not. Henry says he knew what Durojaiye’s current experience was like and it wasn’t healthy.

“I can remember as a child when I was living with my mom in one school year, I went to seven different schools. I know that sounds probably crazy to you guys but it’s true,” Henry said in his weekly media conference from Memorial Stadium on Monday. “As you can imagine, I was a problematic child. My environment changed. I missed a bunch of days of school. It was a lot of chaos, right? Because there wasn’t any stability that allowed me to grow when adversity came up."

It was Henry who would send Durojaiye texts and voicemail messages that had very little to do with on-the-field football questions or issues, but rather short, personal correspondence that resonated over time with the defensive end, who grew up in Philadelphia with a father, Bayo, originally from Nigeria.

“Everybody has a track record and you can do your research. Coach Bielema, Coach Henry would send me personal texts about what they do to develop better players and that meant so much. But it was more than that,” Durojaiye said. “I get this from Coach Henry all the time that if all they did while I was here was make you a better football player, then we failed you.”

Maybe more importantly, Henry and his boss, fifth-year head coach Bret Bielema, also had a handle of what was going to need to be established immediately if Illinois was going to be Durojaiye’s fourth program in as many seasons.

“I think when you get a player with a certain level of ability and they haven’t manifested yet there’s usually one of three things holding them back,” Bielema said. “It’s either the system they’re in, the environment they’re in or the person they’re being.”

Sure, Illinois was in need of immediate defensive line help after Dennis Briggs Jr., TeRah Edwards and Ezekiel Holmes all finished their eligibility in the 2024 campaign. Alex Bray, a developing two-year defensive end, went into the transfer portal where Kansas eventually sign him. However, Bielema and his coaching staff also knew they weren’t going to let their desperate positional need and Durojaiye’s admitted immaturity over the last three years affect the culture of an entire locker room and positional room that still had former high school signees such as Pat Farrell, Angelo McCollum and Jeremiah Warren still in the developmental pipeline.

“When you talk about his ability to hone in his fundamentals when you talk about understanding the calls and what we’re asking him to do from play to play, I’ve seen tremendous growth from him,” Illinois defensive line coach Terrance Jamison said Wednesday. “He’s gone from an incoming transfer who we knew a lot about from his film and talking to his coaches at different places but is now somebody in our building who we know is a trustworthy player.”

Without consciously knowing it, the 6-foot-5, 300-pound defensive lineman arrived in Champaign-Urbana this winter needing to hear things aren’t comfortable from Illinois head coach Bret Bielema, Henry and Jamison, his fourth position coach in college football.

“Tomiwa has found a home in how we do things here and more importantly, he’s found a home in [Terrance] Jamison,” Henry said. “Look, Coach Jamison is hard on his players but all of his players know that he cares about them.

Bielema acknowledged this recruitment of Durojaiye, whose full name is pronounced ‘Toe-me-wah durr-oh-jy-yay’, has been a multi-year project since the 2022 former No. 1 player in the state of Delaware by Rivals.com finished his senior season at Middletown High School with impressive tape that included 58 tackles, 25.5 tackles for loss, 10 sacks, two forced fumbles, and two pass breakups. Therefore, Bielema, the Illini player personnel staff and practically every staff member in the Smith Family Football Complex felt they’d done their research homework on Durojaiye each and every time he’d entered the portal.

“We tried to get Tomiwa more than one time,” Bielema said Monday in his weekly media conference inside Memorial Stadium. “We were very intrigued with him when he was coming out of Kentucky and then again leaving Florida State. I think there were some things he needed to work through personally with us and I have already been very direct with him a couple of times.”

What seemed to immediately click for Durojaiye, who has two years of eligibility remaining in college football, was the idea that the promises Illinois coaches made to him in the recruiting process came to fruition by the beginning of the first game. Durojaiye started, which was something he was told he would get an opportunity to do, in an immediate makeshift defensive line front with Wisconsin transfers James Thompson Jr. and Curt Neal. Durojaiye, even in a glorified scrimmage that was less-than-competitive by the second quarter, participated in the most snaps of any defensive lineman on Friday night and was put in a position to make impact behind-the-line-of-scrimmage plays in the Illini’s aggressive odd-man defensive front.

“Even though there’s been bumps in this road here, I grabbed [Durojaiye] after the game on Friday night and said ‘listen my friend, if this is the kind of player you want to be, this is the program you can do it in.’,” said Bielema.

What seems to be the only question surrounding Durojaiye is whether he can consistently put together 12 regular-season games of consistent play, similarly to how he performed Friday night in his Illini debut. Amongst all the changes for good, bad or indifferent for the young man, who since birth has gone from Philadelphia to Middletown, Delaware to Lexington, Kentucky to Morgantown, West Virginia to Tallahassee, Florida and now Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, that would be a change he has yet to actually see.