🚨 Emergency Post: Wisconsin AD Put His Nuts On The Table
The Wisconsin Badgers have a new head football coach.
Volume 58 will be in your inbox later today, but I wanted to dedicate a post to quite possibly the biggest head coaching news in the history of the Wisconsin football program.
Christmas morning is cool, but have you ever had your alma mater hire a head football coach that makes you feel like you did an eight-ball worth of Colombian Bam-Bam?
When it comes to hiring coaches for the Big 3 sports — football, basketball, and hockey — Wisconsin has been cult-ish. That is, if a candidate does not have any ties to Wisconsin, meaning they have never played for the Badgers or have never coached for the team in the past, then it has appeared that their resume gets thrown in the garbage. (Except for Gary Andersen obviously, a coach who did not even have any Midwest ties and was in way over his head from the jump.)
Luke Fickell, the former Ohio State co-defensive coordinator and interim head coach that also played for the Buckeyes, has zero ties to the program, or the state for that matter. (He obviously has Midwest ties, a plus for sure.) He may have recruited players from the state — I do not have that much time on my hands to confirm one way or another — but he has never received a commitment from an incoming freshman that hails from the state of Wisconsin since he has been at Cincinnati. But you know what? Who gives a flying f*ck because this type of hire is not just a home-run hire. I will take it one step further. It is akin to hitting a game-winning grand-bleepin’-slam in the bottom of ninth with 2 outs.
College football is all about recruiting, or at the very least developing talent. Obviously Xs and Os are important, but if you can’t recruit and/or develop, you’re going to be a loser head coach. Fickell, thankfully, has not been a loser head coach. After only winning four games in his first season in 2017, he has won at least 9 games in each of the last five seasons, including three seasons of at least 11 wins (2018, 2019, and 2021), and will leave the Bearcats with a record of 57-18 overall.
He took CINCINNATI to a New Year’s Six Bowl (Peach Bowl) in 2020, dropping a close one to Georgia, and took CINCINNATI to the CFB Playoff last year, becoming the first non-Power 5 program to make the Playoff. The Bearcats also had 9 players drafted in last year’s NFL draft, third most behind Georgia (15) and LSU (10), including Rookie of the Year frontrunner CB Sauce Gardner, cornerback Coby Bryant (who has had a solid rookie campaign for the Seahawks), and QUARTERBACK Desmond Ridder.
So, Fickell can clearly develop players very well considering his recruiting classes (66th in 2017; 49th in 2018; 64th in 2019; 41st in 2020; 50th in 2021; 48th in 2022), though you have to keep in mind that it is Cinci-friggin-nnati so those rankings are not too shabby by any means. For the Class of 2023, though, he and his staff were cooking with more gas than ever before.
As of this writing, Cincinnati’s 19-player 2023 recruiting class is ranked 27th by 247 Sports, which is the highest ranking that the program has achieved in the history of the recruiting site. Of the 19, 6 are from Ohio; 4 are from Florida; and 3 are from Michigan. The remaining six recruits are from the following states: Indiana, Tennessee, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, and Washington D.C. The class is highlighted by three four-star recruits: 6-foot-4 QB Brady Drogosh (MI), 6-foot-2 safety Daeh McCullough (IN), and 6-foot-3 cornerback Amare Snowden (MI). Comparatively, the Badgers’ 2023 recruiting class is ranked 62nd in the country and only has 11 recruits. There are no four-star recruits.
So, it is definitely possible, if not likely, that some of the recruits from Fickell’s class follow their head coach to Madison. However, there are UW admission standards that you have to keep in mind. The university has the some of the most stringent admission standards for student-athletes in the conference. How will Fickell adjust to that? Will he be able to pull a power move with the new chancellor and force her to lighten up the standards? Well, he may not need to because the Bearcats “tied for the ninth-highest graduation rate nationally” for the 2021 academic year and "maintained above a 92% Graduation Success Rate (GSR) for a fourth consecutive year.”
Regarding personnel, FootballScoop reported that Fickell is expected to bring his recruiting “aces,” Pat Lambert and Max Stienecker, and his strength and conditioning coach with him to Madison. Those are massive additions.
It will be interesting to see how aggressive Fickell will be in the transfer portal and what positions he will target. To succeed in Year 1, I believe he needs to attack the portal with a tenacity unknown to mankind because I would not be surprised if the roster is depleted, with several UW players opting to take their talents elsewhere like losers (respectfully, as always). Further, I would think that quarterback is priority No. 1 because Graham Mertz is — and I cannot state this emphatically enough — not the answer. Could Drogosh be QB1 next year if he flips to the Badgers? I do not think that is out of the realm of possibilities. Speaking of quarterback, how will the offense look under Fickell?
In the last three seasons, here are the bare bone offensive stats:
2020
Scoring offense: 37.5 points/game (17th in FBS)
Total offense: 451.0 yards/game (24th)
Passing offense: 238.6 yards/game (55th)
Rushing offense: 212.4 yards/game (23rd)
2021
Scoring offense: 36.9 points/game (11th)
Total offense: 414.1 yards/game (60th)
Passing offense: 241.2 yards/game (58th)
Rushing offense: 172.9 yards/game (56th)
2022
Scoring offense: 31.1 points/game (46th)
Total offense: 392.8 yards/game (64th)
Passing offense: 255.9 yards/game (43rd)
Rushing offense: 136.8 yards/game (88th)
At the end of the day, I absolutely love the hire because, among other reasons, Wisconsin is now much closer to competing for a Big Ten title and a national title than it was after the Minnesota game.
Is this a gamble by AD Chris McIntosh? Without a doubt. He left Jim Leonhard — who bleeds red and white to the fullest extent — at the altar, surely the safest choice who could go on to be a great head coach. Plus, Fickell could struggle to compete with the likes of Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State, both on the gridiron and on the recruiting trail.
But with USC and UCLA set to join the conference in 2024, and therefore divisions going to the wayside, and with the CFB Playoff expansion right around the corner, McIntosh had to make a big ole splash to keep the Badgers relevant in the conference and nationally. He did just that, pushing all of his chips to the center of the table to get a proven commodity.
WOW Rex!! Great writing with lots of info!! Love it, keep it going!