Wisconsin football hiring Darius Hicks as director of scouting and player personnel
Wisconsin is hiring Michigan State’s Darius Hicks as director of scouting and player personnel, filling a key vacancy in its front office.
The Wisconsin football program is hiring its next director of scouting and player personnel, according to a report from CBS Sports’ Matt Zenitz.
Darius Hicks is expected to fill that role on Luke Fickell’s staff after spending the last three seasons at Michigan State as the Spartans’ director of scouting. The move keeps him in the Big Ten while placing him in a key position within Wisconsin’s growing front office structure.
In an era where roster construction and on-field success depend as much on organization, player retention, and evaluation as they do recruiting relationships, roles like this have become increasingly important.
Hicks arrives in Madison with experience in both the traditional coaching ranks and the modern personnel side of college football.
At Michigan State, he helped oversee scouting operations, evaluate prospects, and assist with roster management during a period that included coaching transitions and heavy transfer portal activity.
Those who worked with Hicks in the building often noted his positive personality, enthusiasm, and strong work ethic. That kind of work frequently happens behind the scenes, but it has become one of the more critical pieces of building and maintaining a competitive roster in today’s landscape.
Before moving into personnel work full-time, Hicks’ path through the sport looked more like a traditional coaching climb.
Hicks began his career at his alma mater, Morningside University, where he worked as a graduate assistant, defensive backs coach, and special teams coordinator from 2014 to 2017, following his playing career as a defensive back for the Mustangs. Hicks earned All-Great Plains Athletic Conference honors during his senior season and was part of a program that reached the NAIA national championship game in 2012.
From there, he moved through the college coaching ranks with stops at Emporia State, where he served as the cornerbacks coach and assistant special teams coordinator, and Southeast Missouri State, where he worked primarily as an assistant defensive backs and cornerbacks coach before shifting toward the scouting and personnel side of the game.
That pivot eventually brought him to East Lansing.
Hicks initially joined Michigan State in 2023 as a defensive analyst before quickly moving into the director of scouting role he held for the next three seasons. In that position, he helped evaluate transfer portal prospects and organize the scouting reports on potential players, while supporting recruiting and personnel operations within the program.
Now he steps into a similar position with the Badgers.
The job Hicks is filling became available after Ethan Russo departed Wisconsin, following a one-year stint as director of player personnel. Russo had been hired in April of 2025 after previous stops at North Texas and UNLV before leaving for a recruiting position at Oklahoma State.
Russo himself had stepped into the role after the departure of Max Stienecker, who left Wisconsin to take a front-office position at USC.
That turnover reflects the reality of modern college football staffs, where personnel departments have grown significantly as Power Four programs try to keep pace with the demands of the transfer portal, revenue sharing, NIL negotiations, and roster management in an expanded Big Ten.
At Wisconsin, Hicks will now slot into that structure alongside general manager Marcus Sedberry and Director of Recruiting Pat Lambert, working behind the scenes to help identify and evaluate talent while supporting the program’s broader recruiting and roster-building strategy.
It’s not a role that typically draws headlines. But in today’s version of college football, it’s one that quietly shapes how the roster is built.
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@Dillon, The Recruiting Department and NIL money seems to be a 608 KGB operation. How many employees are there in our Recruiting Department; Can you draw up an organizational chart ?; Is it possible to get an interview with the head of the Recruiting Department whoever he/she or it (as in AI) is ? ; Is there a mission statement for the Recruiting Department ?; Does the Recruiting Department have access to allocate money or does that bring in another department or another layer of personnel ?; How much money does the Recruiting Department have to work with ?; Can you explain in laymen's terms what the bill going thru the Wisconsin State legislature does ?; etc. I have no idea what's going on especially since we seem to specialize inD II and DIII players. Thanks.