Has Wisconsin Lost Its In-State Recruiting Fastball?
The Badgers are keeping fewer in-state kids home. Does it matter?
The Wisconsin football program cultivated a three-decade-long reputation as a school that assembled the foundation of the Badgers roster by focusing recruiting efforts on keeping in-state talents home.
While that philosophy will always be true on some level, it’s worth acknowledging that for myriad reasons, it’s no longer a given that the Wisconsin Badgers will keep the top in-state recruits home.
UW kept the top player in Wisconsin home in 11 of 13 seasons from 2011-2023, landing 23 of the 30 (76.6%) composite four-star recruits.
Following that impressive run, things have taken a noticeable turn.
Since I don’t have a horse in the race in terms of opinion on how Wisconsin football coaches should build their team, I thought it might be worth exploring just how significant some of those shifts have been.
Badgers Might Be Losing Their In-State Recruiting Fastball
For Wisconsin football traditionalists, this unfamiliar recruiting territory lies in the Badgers coaches no longer having the ability to (essentially) pick and choose the top in-state talents and have them want to wear the Motion W throughout their careers.
With Catholic Memorial standout Owen Strebig (likely) heading to Notre Dame, that now means 9 of the last 11 composite four-star in-state recruits have bypassed the Wisconsin Badgers in favor of other programs.
Could this shift be completely random? Sure. Could it more recently have to do with Coach Fickell and his staff not having built enough trust among the high school coaches yet? Maybe. We’ll never know for sure.
“Our philosophy is going to be: Recruit our state first and foremost, our 350-mile radius next,” Luke Fickell told reporters.
I doubt that Fickell and company are eager to throw away a proven formula the Wisconsin football program has thrived using for decades. But it’s also not the only way to build a roster talented enough to compete at the highest level. So, I’ll trust the individual who guided a non-Power 5 program to the College Football Playoffs, as he likely possesses a solid understanding of talent evaluation.