Well, that didn’t take long.
One week after Wisconsin football gave its fan base a reason to believe things might finally be turning around with a convincing win over No. 16 USC, the Badgers traveled to Iowa City and delivered one of the most embarrassing performances of Luke Fickell’s tenure.
Iowa 30, Wisconsin 0.
Not competitive. Not particularly complicated. Just another afternoon where the gap between these two programs looked considerably larger than anyone in Madison should be comfortable admitting.
Wisconsin entered Saturday having lost three consecutive meetings with Iowa under Fickell, getting outscored 94-16. Now, you can make that four straight losses and a combined 124-16 margin.
That’s not a rivalry anymore. That’s ownership.
The Badgers fell to 5-3 overall and 3-2 in Big Ten play, but the record almost feels secondary. What matters is that four years into this experiment, Wisconsin looks like a program capable of an occasional encouraging result without sustaining anything resembling meaningful progress.
“Well, that was an old-fashioned ass whooping,’ Fickell told reporters. … “I’m not sitting here saying I’ve got any answers for you, other than I’m not pointing any fingers at anybody or anything because in all three phases of the game we were completely manhandled for 60 minutes.”
At some point, you have to stop asking when Fickell is going to turn things around and start asking whether he’s the right person to do it.
With that as the backdrop, let’s hand out some grades.
