The 1946 Illinois Fighting Illini football team was an American football team that represented the University of Illinois in the 1946 Big Nine Conference football season. Led by fifth-year head coach Ray Eliot, the Illini compiled an 8–2 record and won the Big Nine championship. They finished the season ranked No. 5 in the final AP Poll and were invited to play in the 1947 Rose Bowl where they defeated No. 4 UCLA, 45–14. Center Mac Wenskunas was the team captain.

Raymond Eliot "Butch" Nusspickel was an American football and baseball player, coach, and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Illinois College from 1934 to 1936 and at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1942 to 1959, compiling a career college football record of 98–80–12. Eliot was also the head baseball coach at Illinois College from 1933 to 1937. His Illinois Fighting Illini football teams won three Big Ten Conference championships and two Rose Bowls. Eliot, who spent almost his entire career at the University of Illinois—he was a student athlete, an assistant football coach, head football coach, associate athletic director, and finally the interim athletic director for the university—was nicknamed "Mr. Illini." He attended the University of Illinois, played as a guard on the football team in 1930 and 1931, and was a member of Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity. He died of an apparent heart attack on February 24, 1980, in Urbana, Illinois.