How Wisconsin football’s recruiting approach has been forced to evolve during the Luke Fickell era

A look at how Wisconsin's recruiting approach has changed since Luke Fickell was hired, and how the Badgers are finally adapting to the modern era.

Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell on the snowy field wearing a Badgers hoodie during the Minnesota matchup. Photo credit: Allan Ganther.

There was a moment, not all that long ago, when it felt like the University of Wisconsin football program had finally found the right steward for its next era. Sit back and watch Fickell’s introductory press conference from Nov. 2022. You’ll see it: the fully formed blueprint, the clarity of vision, the confidence of a coach who had built Cincinnati into a College Football Playoff contender by leaning on something other schools couldn’t imitate.

Relationships. Development. High-school recruiting. Ownership of the Midwest. That was the sales pitch. That was the promise. And for about fifteen minutes, it sounded like the perfect marriage between a coach with a proven developmental background and a program that had built three decades of winning football on those very same values.

But three years later? The sport changed faster than the blueprint did.

And nothing illustrates that evolution, or that philosophical pivot, quite like looking at what Fickell said on Day 1, and what he’s saying right now.

The Original Blueprint: High School First, Portal Second

From the jump, Fickell laid out a recruiting philosophy rooted in simplicity. Wisconsin, he said, would build from the inside out, starting with a “300-mile radius” that would serve as the core and crux of the program’s build.

Verbatim, Fickell said:

“Within a 300-mile radius, you can build the core and the crux of your program,” Fickell said during his introductory press conference. “And that’s what I love about this opportunity, is that within a 300-mile radius, that will be the core of what it is that we do. I have a good grasp on that. I’ve got to learn a lot more about maybe the 50-mile, the 100-mile radius. But as you get into Chicago and the areas that these guys have done an unbelievable job in, there are a lot of roots that have been built there.

“I know if we can kind of capture that within the 300-mile radius of where the core of the program is, then we can extend into the other areas where we’ll look at the history of what’s been really good here,” Fickell continued. The pipelines and those kinds of things. We’ll use a lot of the connections we’ve had. There are a lot of former great players who are from Ohio as well. We’ll have guys with backgrounds in different areas.”

When Fickell talked about that radius, he wasn’t describing some abstract idea. He was talking about a region that included places like Detroit, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, and St. Louis, as well as the heart of Wisconsin and the football-rich pockets of Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Iowa.

In his mind, this was where the backbone of the roster would be built. This was where the high school relationships lived, where the Badgers could win recruiting battles by being smart and connected. And this was where he believed the heavy lifting would happen. That wasn’t lip service.

That was the Cincinnati model brought north: lock down Wisconsin, live in established long-term pipelines across the Midwest. Then, supplement using the transfer portal sparingly, but only when a player fits perfectly.

Again, Fickell’s words:

“I’m a high school recruiting guy that says it’s about development of young men,” Fickell said. “Now, sometimes people will say, ‘You had this transfer.’ Yeah, we have had a matrix for transfers. We have had literally a matrix to say they’ve got to hit these points in these situations and these things, because the last thing I want to do is bring a guy into our program here in particular that’s going to mess with the culture, mess with the environment, mess with the relationships inside a lot of those rooms.

“So in my mind, it’s got to be a right fit, and it’s got to be the right people. The thing about transfers is sometimes you don’t know them, and you don’t have the opportunity like you’ve had in high school to get to know them, to be in their home, to build some relationships, and know when they walk in the door they’ve got four or five years to grow and develop into what it is that you want. I’ve never been a proponent of the transfer portal, but I think we’ve used it and would use it only in ways to fill gaps.”

For an outsider with no ties to the program, it was a developmental philosophy that fit the Wisconsin ethos like a glove. Toughness. Development. Ideally, players would become starters in Year 3, contributors in Year 4, and pros in Year 5. That’s the Barry Alvarez model. That’s the DNA of the Badgers. What more could fans have wanted?

And Fickell, along with the revamped recruiting department he brought along with him from Cincinnati, sounded ready to replicate it.

The Reality: A Different Sport, a Different Wisconsin

College football, though, doesn’t wait for your philosophy to catch up. NIL exploded. Free transfer rules wiped out continuity. Roster turnover hit 40–50% annually. Programs with deep donor pools — Penn State, Ohio State, Oregon, Texas — turned roster building into a cold, economic arms race.

And suddenly, the sport Fickell had built his blueprint around was gone. The 300-mile radius? It didn’t hold.

Wisconsin has lost multiple in-state recruits since Fickell took over, a trend some attribute to the staff lacking the same cachet with local high schools while trying to leverage the program’s brand more nationally to chase higher-end talent. There have been cases where that approach has paid off, but the larger pattern has been harder to ignore. The 2026 cycle underscored it again. The staff pushed their chips in on players like Amari Latimer and Jayden Petit — some of the top-ranked prospects at their positions — but still couldn’t hold onto them when it mattered.

Latimer flipped to West Virginia on Signing Day, and Petit, who the staff believed could eventually be a cornerstone, flipped to Oklahoma.

That doesn’t happen in the old model. But it does happen in the modern marketplace. The developmental model? It cracked.

Wisconsin couldn’t keep players long enough to develop them. You build a three or four-year plan for a high school prospect, only to watch another school drop an NIL number you can’t match. Or you redshirt a player, and they transfer before Year 3 because the depth chart looks crowded.

That turns every high-school recruit into a risk, not a building block. Fickell knows this now. And he said as much on Signing Day 2026.

“Not saying we don’t want to take high school kids, not saying we don’t want to take the in-state kids,” Fickell said. “I think for us, just recognizing and saying, okay, now this league is a bit different. And it is harder and harder with younger guys to think you can be successful. And so the balance there with the higher end of what you really believe as freshmen, we call them draft picks now. I mean, you don’t have 22 draft picks.

“So that was a little bit more of the idea, like, okay, let’s be disciplined in what we’re doing, which is going to put you in a situation where the transfer portal is going to have to be one of those things that’s probably bigger than you’ve ever used before. As well as retaining the guys that you’ve got in your program. You’ve got to invest and make sure the ones you have here are the ones that you’ve got to be able to keep here.”

That isn’t the 2022 blueprint, nor is it the framework college football was built on. It’s a coach and an administration reacting to the sport as it currently exists, even if they didn’t have the foresight, the positioning, or the resources to meet this era head-on. They’re pivoting now, and the question becomes whether they can deliver before the clock runs out.

Why the Blueprint Broke — and What Recruiting Has Become

The most honest problem? You cannot build for 2028 when your job depends on 2026. Wisconsin is 17–21 under Fickell, 10–17 in Big Ten play, and is just 2–11 against AP Top 25 teams. Not to mention, the program missed bowl games in both 2024 and 2025 for the first time since 1991-92, breaking a 22-season postseason streak. The fanbase is restless.

Donors are watching. And even if you land high-school players that you believe in, there’s no guarantee they’ll still be on your roster when it’s time for them to help you win. As Fickell hinted on National Signing Day, you need players who can help immediately, and you need them on campus in January if you want any realistic chance of getting production in Year 1.

“Being here in January was a really big thing for us,” Fickell said. “If you can’t come in January, you’re starting to look at guys and say, How do we have a chance to play this guy in Year 1 if they’re not here? You’ve gotta feel like the guys can get on the field. A lot of that has to do with some natural ability, but a lot of it has to do with a size that you have to have.”

That is the polar opposite approach of the Cincinnati-to-Wisconsin developmental arc he preached in 2022. It’s not because Fickell lied. It’s because the sport changed, and he either adapts or gets left behind.

That adaptation has finally arrived. Wisconsin just signed 13 players in its 2026 high-school recruiting class, the smallest class the program has taken since 2012, when the Badgers signed 12 athletes, and it was entirely intentional. Fickell said it openly: the philosophy has changed.

Instead of trying to bring in 22 high-school players every year, Wisconsin is now taking far fewer freshmen, treating them more like draft picks, and investing more heavily in proven players through the transfer portal. It reflects a model most top-tier programs use. It’s one built around having older players, instant-impact additions, and far fewer long-term projections. Because if you’re coaching for your job, you simply can’t wait multiple years for a developmental plan that might never materialize.

And the truth is, Wisconsin wasn’t positioned financially or structurally to compete in this new era. The NIL infrastructure wasn’t there. Athletic Director Chris McIntosh acknowledged it. Prominent donor Ted Kellner acknowledged it. By their own admission, Wisconsin operated in the “bottom third” of the Big Ten in NIL spending this past year. That’s how West Virginia beats you for a player you spent multiple years recruiting.

McIntosh and Kellner are now promising a long-overdue investment of resources in the football program. They want Wisconsin in the “top third” of the conference. They want a stronger donor base. They want to win big-time portal recruitments. But it’s a bold claim to suggest the Badgers will suddenly leap from the lower tier of Big Ten spending into the same financial lane as blue-blood programs chasing playoff berths.

And it’s even harder to project where Wisconsin will realistically land when nobody truly knows what other programs are operating with in terms of money behind the scenes. Whether the promised influx of NIL funding actually materializes remains to be seen, but the message inside the building has shifted: development alone won’t bridge the gap anymore.

Fickell has been candid about what that shift requires. On Signing Day, he offered one of his clearest acknowledgments yet that modern recruiting isn’t just about relationships or evaluations anymore, it’s about investment.

“I think it comes down to an investment,” Fickell explained. “And the truth of the matter is, in a traditional way of doing things, recruiting had been a lot about relationships. And I’m not saying that there aren’t still some traditional things, but there is a bigger piece of what recruiting is. And if you’re not willing to invest in some guys and you feel like they could get on the field, then you’ve got to make some disciplined decisions.”

You have to acquire proven production to win now, because universities need the revenue stream, and the ones serious about winning put their money where their mouth is. Football is the lifeblood of any successful athletic department, and the consistency Wisconsin once enjoyed meant the Badgers were never forced to invest like their peers, at least not until the product became nearly unwatchable and the reality finally set in.

And that leaves Wisconsin somewhere between what Fickell promised and what the sport has forced him to become. The old model was built through high-school recruiting, long-term development, maintaining strong Midwest relationships, and occasional use of the transfer portal.

The new standard across college football is one built on a portal-based roster construction, smaller, more selective high school classes, expectations of instant contributions, older, more physically mature players, a draft-pick mentality toward freshmen, and a staff operating in survival mode as it coaches for its future. None of this is a shot at Fickell.

But make no mistake: Fickell deserves the lion’s share of the blame for where Wisconsin sits today. Three seasons in, there are very few data points suggesting he’s been a difference-maker on Saturdays. His game management has been shaky, his situational decisions have been costly, and there are real questions about whether he has stayed ahead of the curve or fully understands what it takes to win in this version of the Big Ten.

Fickell has routinely been slow to adapt, miscalculated which schemes translate in this league, assembled a subpar coaching staff, and, too often, failed to put his players in the best positions to succeed.

But all of that can be true while also acknowledging the other half of the story.

Fickell attempted to build Wisconsin using the exact recruit-and-develop blueprint that once made him one of college football’s most successful coaches, and the sport changed beneath his feet. The Badgers were slow to give him the resources required to execute that plan, and when you aren’t the kind of coach who tilts games through pure in-game acumen, you have to compensate with terrific coordinators and high-end talent.

This staff has rarely gotten more out of the roster than the raw talent already on it, which makes acquiring better players non-negotiable. So while it’s fair to question whether Fickell and his recruiting department can actually maximize whatever new NIL funding they’ve got at their disposal, it’s equally true that the athletic department did Fickell no favors by asking him to win while operating with fewer resources than his peers.

To Fickell’s credit, he’s fully aware of how difficult the evaluation piece has become in this era. He said something on Signing Day that spoke to the razor-thin margin staffs operate on, where almost every high school eval has to be correct because developmental timelines no longer exist.

“The lifeblood of what you do is still bringing guys in that you can develop, and we’ve got to be able to do that,” Fickell said on Signing Day. “You can’t miss on those guys that are going to be developed. That’s what’s sometimes harder. You don’t miss on four and five-star guys. They might not pan out completely, but there’s a reason those guys are higher rated or ranked in a lot of things — they’re more developed. You’ve got a good idea whether their high-end ceiling is better than somebody that’s a two or three-star.

“Usually, the reason that they’re ranked a little bit higher is that they’ve got an opportunity to walk in and play a little bit more. So, there’s a greater balance in making sure you’re doing a better job of being right about the guys that maybe can or can’t play just yet.”

Now, finally, the staff and athletic department appear aligned with reality. The NIL commitment from private donors and corporate partnerships is rising, so they say. The recruiting approach has shifted. The urgency is unmistakable. Fickell is coaching with the understanding that Year 4 determines everything. Wisconsin has gone from trying to “build the core and crux” of the program within a 300-mile radius to preparing itself to assemble a roster capable of winning now through the portal — not because the vision changed, but because the sport demanded it.

And this offseason will reveal whether the adaptation came too late or just in time.

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