MADISON, Wis. — Luke Fickell was deep into a 30-minute conversation in his office last week when he used two words that highlighted what he believed to be part of the problem during his first two seasons as Wisconsin’s football coach: arrogance and delusion.
There are far more issues at play when a team is 12-13 under its coach, including 8-10 in the Big Ten, and coming off the program’s first losing season and missed bowl game opportunity in 23 years. And Fickell was willing to go there, too. But from a big-picture perspective, this is where he starts.
“I know the arrogance I would kick myself for is coming in and thinking, ‘OK now, we’re the best in the Big Ten West,’” Fickell said. “And everybody in that locker room, because of the history of the last 15 years, would say we’re the best in the West. And the truth of the matter is we’re not.
“I know it’s not the Big Ten West anymore. But it’s that idea of let’s just humble ourselves and let’s go and work our way back and figure out how coach (Barry) Alvarez and them took this place to become the best in the West. And let’s get ourselves to that point and then everything else will take care of itself. It’s not the best 11, it’s the 11 best that do s— together that give us a chance, the same way they built it here over the last 25 years.”
Fickell’s hiring at Wisconsin in November 2022 was met with enthusiasm because of his accomplishments at Cincinnati, where he became the only coach of a Group of 5 program to reach the four-team College Football Playoff. The Badgers were a few years removed from closing the previous decade with five Big Ten Championship Game appearances, and the aim was to restore that expectation and vie for a future spot in the 12-team Playoff field.
But two years into Fickell’s tenure, the Badgers haven’t competed at a championship level and haven’t won hardly any game of consequence. Fickell is 0-6 against AP Top 25 teams, and he has beaten just three opponents that finished the season with a winning record: Rutgers twice and FCS South Dakota.
The offense, however, was only part of the issue. Wisconsin’s defense, though great at times, was dominated during other stretches. The Badgers surrendered at least 40 points in three games for the first time since 2001, including a 42-10 loss to Alabama in addition to blowout defeats against Iowa and Nebraska. They allowed Iowa, with a backup quarterback who passed just 10 times, to run for 329 yards and five touchdowns in a 42-10 romp.
Fickell retained defensive coordinator Mike Tressel, who worked under Fickell for two seasons at Cincinnati. The focus this offseason was on tweaking personnel up front after the Badgers ranked 91st nationally in run defense at 165 yards allowed per game, the worst program mark in 19 years. Three defensive linemen transferred out, including starter Curt Neal, and Wisconsin brought in five defensive linemen from the portal. Nine of the team’s 18 scholarship transfer additions came on the defensive line and at linebacker. Fickell said he is optimistic Wisconsin is in a better position structurally on offense and defense to move the program forward.
“You’ve got to be bigger, you’ve got to be stronger, you’ve got to be able to win the line of scrimmage,” Fickell said. “If there’s anything that they’ve done here that’s given them a chance to be as good as they have been over the last 25 years, it sure as hell is going to continue to be at the line of scrimmage. To be quite honest, as we went the other direction those last five weeks, it became more evident on the defensive line than it did anything else.”
Wisconsin’s roster will feature at least 41 new scholarship players next season — 23 true freshmen and 18 transfers not counting potential additions during the spring portal window. That doesn’t guarantee results, as the last two seasons with large transfer classes under Fickell demonstrated. But Fickell said that, in hindsight, he believed the challenge Wisconsin faces now “wasn’t what a lot of people signed up for” and that moving on from some of them was important. He said he thought players would have a better understanding of daily expectations and what is required to succeed.
Several hurdles stand in Wisconsin’s way. The Badgers, who excelled at developing players, have a smaller window to do so in the portal and name, image and likeness era. The program has been forced to adapt to a changing landscape that now features 18 Big Ten teams and no divisions. When Fickell continually references the former Big Ten West, he means that Wisconsin’s path to championships is more difficult and that the Badgers must begin by beating the teams they used to routinely beat just to have a chance.
The schedule difficulty next season is undeniable. Wisconsin could play at least six Top 25 teams next season. There are road games against Alabama, Michigan, Oregon, Indiana and Minnesota and home games against Iowa, Ohio State and Illinois, among others. The Badgers have never played more than five ranked teams during a regular season, and they will play seven of the eight teams that finished with a winning Big Ten record last season.
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