Wisconsin football coach Luke Fickell ready to address arrogance, delusion of tenure

New York Times

24-02-2025

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.
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'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.
Wisconsin did reach 5-2 overall and 3-1 in Big Ten play in October. Then came a five-game losing streak to close the season that included competitive defeats to Playoff teams Penn State and Oregon along with three embarrassing losses to former West foes. Wisconsin was outscored by Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota 110-42. Fickell, who fired offensive coordinator Phil Longo during that stretch, said the team 'fell apart' and noted players struggled to recover from a 28-13 loss to the Nittany Lions that began the skid.
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Fickell understands there is only so much he can say because the results speak for themselves. Until those change, nothing else really matters. But to help put Wisconsin back on the right path, he at least wanted to ensure a new level of transparency was shared with players when they returned for preseason workouts last month.
'I felt like I hadn't done a good enough job as a leader of being really honest,' Fickell said. 'Sometimes honesty is very difficult. And sometimes honesty can be a de-motivator for some. Through that process, that's what I mean by I think we were delusional, and I wasn't honest enough with us to say, 'Look guys, we're not better than so-and-so.' Honesty comes with being self-reflective to say, 'OK, where are we? Let's embrace the idea of where we really are and don't think we're someplace we're not.' If we can't be honest with each other, then it's really difficult to move forward.'
Humility might represent a start. But Fickell's ability to fix all the issues that plagued the Badgers will define his third season and potentially his tenure at Wisconsin.
Start with the offense, which came nowhere close to achieving its ceiling. All the excitement that Longo's variation of an air raid offense brought quickly fizzled. Wisconsin averaged 22.6 points per game last season, tied for 108th nationally. The mark was only slightly better than in Longo's first season when the Badgers averaged 22.5 points — the two worst seasons for the program consecutively since 1991 and 1992. Fickell fired Longo one day after Wisconsin's 16-13 loss to No. 1 Oregon with two games remaining in the regular season.
'I said it when we made the change offensively: It's more about leadership than it is just about scheme,' Fickell said. 'We all know that once people, if they stop believing in me, it's not a good thing. If they stop believing in the things that you do offensively or defensively, it's not a good thing. And that's where some of the changes have to be made, and we've got to get us pointed in another direction.'
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Wisconsin did endure injuries to starting quarterbacks Tanner Mordecai and Tyler Van Dyke in each of Fickell's seasons. Van Dyke suffered a season-ending ACL tear in his right knee on the first series of the third game against Alabama that forced backup Braedyn Locke into action. Locke struggled with accuracy and decision-making and, like Van Dyke, transferred after the season.
But the offense wasn't exactly humming before. Wisconsin trailed Western Michigan 14-13 in the season opener before a muffed fourth-quarter punt helped give the Badgers the lead. Fickell acknowledged he didn't do a good enough job of recognizing exactly what he wanted Wisconsin's offense to be or even the personnel across the roster capable of adapting well enough to succeed. Throughout the season, it was clear Fickell wanted to play with heavier packages and more physicality that better blended what Wisconsin has traditionally done well.
'I'm not pointing a finger at Phil,' Fickell said. 'I brought him here to run what it is that he runs and thought that we would be able to adapt a little bit more to some of the things I think that would suit us for who we are and what we need to do. Winning can mask that, and a few really good players can mask that. Tanner Mordecai is a really good football player and really good in that system. And had he not gotten hurt in Year 1, I really still think things would've been different.
'But as you go through it, there's just so much predicated in that system on the quarterback, and if you can't get really high-end, great quarterback play, I think it's really difficult to be able to lean on and rely upon, whether it's the O-line or your run game because that position is so critical. For us, I don't think moving forward that was the way in which we needed to continue to build.'
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Wisconsin's offense will look drastically different in 2025 because Fickell hired Jeff Grimes from Kansas as the offensive coordinator. Grimes, whose background is as an offensive line coach and run game coordinator, said the goal is to 'get Wisconsin back to what it's known for.' There are pieces in place that cause optimism. Wisconsin returns two of its best playmakers at wide receiver, three starters along the offensive line and a talented young backfield and has been infused with key transfer portal additions, including starting quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. (Maryland) and tight end Tanner Koziol (Ball State).
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.
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'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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'You've got to make sure that you're built for the things that you are going to be challenged with,' Fickell said. 'I can honestly tell you in talks with the guys, whether they were coming back or in the recruiting process, especially for transfers, one of the No. 1 things I would do is set the schedule down in front of them and say, 'Look, we're not hiding. If your ass doesn't want this and you don't recognize that this is what it's about, then this is not going to be the place for you.' I would say we didn't get some guys because of that. But hopefully, we got the right ones because of it as well.
'We can b—- and complain about it, but it's not going to change it. So that's a part of that 'this isn't the Big Ten West anymore.' But that's why you've got to be focused on the process and do a better job. I've got to do a better job at making sure we're leading through the process and quit worrying about the destination of everything. We've got to see the growth.'
Fickell, who made $7.7 million last season and earned a standard university one-year contract extension last week through 2032, understands there is increased scrutiny on his performance with each disappointing season. He repeatedly has said Wisconsin has a mountain to climb. How close he can get the Badgers to reaching the summit will dictate his future.
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'People are disappointed,' Fickell said. 'I can promise you that I'm a hell of a lot more disappointed. But as the leader and as the guy to continue to move forward, you can't take it out on the guys that you have now. It's not going to change the fact of what happened.
'I'm perfectly good with everybody's opinions for whatever they want and they have the right to say. It doesn't bother me. There's a pressure from within. We've got to be better. And what does better look like? I'm not going to sit here and say what that is. But I know this, that it's going to be from within first and you've got to see that better alignment, that better transition to the things that will ultimately prevail on the field.'