Wisconsin Football: 3 Reasons hiring Luke Fickell was the right decision
Badger Notes lists three reasons hiring Luke Fickell was the right move for the Wisconsin football program.
(Photo: Courtesy of UW Athletics)
Madison, Wis. - The existential question for the Wisconsin football program has seemingly been, "how do we take the next step?"
Since 2014, UW has accumulated the most wins of any program that hasn't made the College Football Playoffs, although former head coach Paul Chryst seemingly had the Badgers on the cusp at his peak.
Since then, Wisconsin has become stale, unimaginative, and in many ways, broken. Whatever you want to call it, UW has taken steps backward.
After accumulating four 10+win seasons in five years, the Badgers haven't won the Big Ten West in three years - a sentence I never thought I would utter given the trajectory UW was on a few seasons ago.
The answer to Wisconsin's problems, at least in the mind of UW athletic director Chris McIntosh, was hiring Cincinnati HC Luke Fickell.
Today, Badger Notes lists three reasons hiring coach Fickell was the right move for the Wisconsin football program.
1. He's a proven commodity
The heart wanted Jim Leonhard as Wisconsin’s next head coach for obvious reasons, but the head understands that hiring Luke Fickell was a no-brainer.
Fickell, the reigning National Coach of the Year, who is only 49 years old, has as good of a resume as you'll find in college football.
In six seasons with the Bearcats, he compiled a 57-18 overall record, winning two AAC Championships (2020, 2021) with Cincinnati, and became the first Group of Five football coach to lead his program to the College Football Playoffs in 2021.
And if you want to take it a step further, he took a team comprised of two and three-star recruits that he developed to college football's final four and didn't look outclassed against Nick Saban and Alabama.
Let's call a spade a spade; this man was on the short-list for just about every Power 5 job that would come open - the fact that Wisconsin landed him is both a surprise and a blessing.
Nobody knows if these things will work out, but this is a grand-slam hire for UW on paper.
2. Luke Fickell's core principles align with UW's
Albeit slightly different from an aesthetic, Luke Fickell's core principles mirror the University of Wisconsin's - a sentiment echoed by AD Chris McIntosh.
"My objective is not to change that [Wisconsin's identity]," Fickell told UW reporters. "My objective is to try and find ways to grow it and enhance it … I wouldn't expect it to be much of any different or change in those ways of it being the tough, hard-nosed kind of guys that have made this place special."
Luke Fickell understands games are won and lost in the trenches, values offensive line play is a defensive-minded coach, and has Midwest roots. He already sounds like a "Wisconsin guy" to me.
He's a program builder who wants the foundation of his team built on recruiting hard-nosed local players and utilizing his strong track record of player development to field a winner. He acknowledged he's willing to use the transfer portal to fill gaps on the roster, but it's not a preferred method of roster construction.
So, it's not like he's going to reinvent the wheel here, and quite frankly, I'm not sure UW needs that. He can, however, bring an outside voice with a different perspective to a program that needs fresh ideas.
He's cut from the same cloth as many of his predecessors, and I mean that as a compliment.