Wisconsin Football Coach Gives Pathetic Answer Talking About Success, Fans Won't Be Happy
The Badgers are coming off a pathetic 5-7 season in 2024. Head coach Luke Fickell now faces immense pressure.
Wisconsin football coach Luke Fickell continues to be a master of managing to give fans nothing to inspire them.
As I've said many times before, the Wisconsin football program is in a very dark place. A very dark place with no light at the end of the tunnel.
Fickell was hired to replace Paul Chryst, and the expectation was clear:
He would return Wisconsin to its ways of winning, which existed only a few years ago.
That, to put it simply, hasn't come close to happening. Fickell is 13-13 in Madison, and went an abysmal 5-7 last season. It's beyond embarrassing.
The Luke Fickell era in Madison is off to a very rough start. (Photo by Ed Mulholland/Getty Images)
Luke Fickell fails to provide hope for fans in 2025.
You'd think Fickell would have a canned answer ready to go when asked about what Wisconsin needs to do in 2025 to get fans to believe again. I'm not the coach of the team, and right off the top of my head, I can tell you the team needs to make a bowl game.
To be even clearer, winning eight games would probably take immense pressure off Fickell. Somehow, the Badgers head coach isn't able to speak as directly as a guy who works on a computer for a living.
Fickell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the following when asked about what success means:
"Play better. Play more consistent and be able to finish. What does that mean? Does that mean 10 wins, nine wins, eight wins, I don’t know…So what is success? I should say it’s not defined by the people outside the program, but what we weren’t able to do was finish last year. What we weren’t able to do is in a lot of ways stay together and what we weren’t able to do was to win at the end. And we have to be able to do that."
Wisconsin football coach Luke Fickell doesn't seem able to define what success means for the 2025 season. (Photo by Ross Harried/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Sigh. Here we go again with Fickell being the master of saying stuff without saying anything at all. He might not be able to win a lot of games in Madison, but the man sure can talk. At least he's good at something.
Now, has Fickell actually done some legitimate things to inject life into Wisconsin? Yes. The clearest one is hiring Jeff Grimes as the team's new OC. Grimes' offensive philosophy is to be big upfront, run the ball and try to be tougher than opponents. That's the mindset that made Wisconsin football a premier Big Ten program for three decades.
That mentality and template was thrown out the window during Fickell's first two years in Madison. Good for him for at least getting back to Wisconsin's old ways.
Wisconsin's football team needs to get back to running the ball. (Photo by John Fisher/Getty Images)
Having said that, the fact the Badgers head coach can't even clearly lay out a concrete vision for success with the season starting in a few days is wild. I still see nothing to make fans believe Wisconsin is going to turn this around, and until I see it on the field, I won't believe it. We'll find out starting Thursday night against Miami (OH). Let me know your thoughts at David.Hookstead@outkick.com.