Alabama to Test How Much of a Home Runner Luke Fickell, Hired at Wisconsin

Luke Fickell has coached just 15 football games with the Wisconsin Badgers and has won (slightly) more than his share. This is Week 3 of his sophomore year, so maybe it’s unfair for us to wonder if this combination is working as smoothly as everyone involved initially imagined.

But after a mediocre freshman year and mediocre performances in wins over Western Michigan and South Dakota over the first two weekends of the season, it appears that this week’s Big Noon matchup with No. 4 Alabama is more of a major obstacle than a major opportunity for the Badgers.

“This is where you get tested,” Fickell told Badgers fans on his weekly radio show. “You never really know where you are until you get tested.”

That’s the optimistic view, the players’ view. That’s what a football coach should say — and believe. But in college football, as it is practiced in 2024, most would prefer the best testing to come in conference games, where it’s mandatory, not voluntary.

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Realistically, Alabama seems to be in a much better position for this opportunity, even in Week 3 under new coach Kalen DeBoer. He had less time to build Alabama, but he entered a situation where nothing more was needed than deciding where to plant flowers and whether new window coverings were wise.

Wisconsin hasn’t played a top-10 nonleague opponent at Camp Randall Stadium in 35 years. We can’t yet know how significant this edition of the Crimson Tide will be, but they’ve defeated FBS opponents Western Kentucky and USF by a combined score of 105-16. They started the season with a veteran quarterback, Jalen Milroe, and three players who are projected to be top-100 picks in the 2025 NFL Draft. Wisconsin doesn’t have any. For now, at least.

That’s what these next four months are all about, in a way. Few college football teams win the biggest games without exceptional players. Fickell’s extraordinary 2021 Cincinnati team, which reached the College Football Playoff despite competing in the American Athletic Conference at the time, had five players selected in the top 100, including fourth-overall pick Sauce Gardner.

“I think a lot of programs struggle with the same thing Luke Fickell struggles with, which is coaches who are in their second or third year,” Fox Sports college football analyst Brady Quinn told The Sporting News. “And that’s, at least to me, how do you build the foundation of what you want your team to be … but at the same time, you’re trying to fix your roster so you can compete right away, so you can exceed expectations.

“With the transfer portal and the NIL and all these other mitigating factors, it’s hard to make sure you’re always right when you bring these players in. Because you don’t really get a lot of opportunity to see how these guys adjust to the scheme, to see what they’re like as players, because of the limited workouts you have in the spring, and then you go back to training camp, there’s no preseason, and then you get to real, live games.”

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The Wisconsin job, which Fickell accepted in November 2022, has changed noticeably. Since the Big Ten realigned its divisions in 2014, Wisconsin has had the luxury of living in the West, while Penn State, Michigan and Ohio State have been isolated in the East. In 10 seasons, the Badgers have met those teams just 10 times combined — and lost eight. In an expanded conference with USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon all in for 2024, Wisconsin’s protected rivalries are with Iowa and Minnesota, but it will still play this season against the Trojans, Nittany Lions and Ducks, who are currently ranked among the top 12 teams in the country.

The Badgers went 7-6 in Fickell’s first season. That wasn’t a problem at all. The program couldn’t handle the coaching change because they’re cool. They cost money. They’re a lot of work. And they often fail. It happened because those in charge decided Wisconsin football no longer looked like Wisconsin football.

It’s possible the slow start to the season is the result of another change at quarterback. Last year, starter Tanner Mordecai was brought in from SMU and threw for 2,066 yards in 10 starts before his season was cut short by a hand injury that cost him three games. Even this year, he threw for fewer than 200 yards in six games — three of them before the Iowa game, in which he was injured.

To replace him, Wisconsin brought in Tyler Van Dyke from the Miami Hurricanes, who started 11 games last season for the Hurricanes, who went 7-6. He completed 65.8 percent of his passes for the Canes but threw almost as many interceptions (12) as touchdowns (19). Now, with Miami looking formidable behind its own transfer QB, Cam Ward, and former Ohio State Buckeye Kyle McCord wowing Syracuse fans, it’s fair to wonder if the Badgers did as well as they could in finding someone to run the offense.

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Quinn says Van Dyke has the ability to make the Badgers’ offense work and win the Big Ten Conference. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” Quinn said. “When he has a clean pocket, he can be very accurate. He can make all the throws; he can do everything you ask of him. I think he’s a little bit better of an athlete than people probably give him credit for… He can still jump out and run and pick something up with his legs sometimes.”

While the offense has been lackluster in its first two wins, Quinn wonders if offensive coordinator Phil Longo hasn’t been holding back on certain concepts, like most NFL teams would do in an exhibition season, keeping the offense as bland as possible so that opponents in a real game — or, in the case of Alabama coming to town, a really important game — can’t get a taste and decide how to handle it.

During Wisconsin’s mostly glorious recent history — what you might call the Barry Alvarez era, dating back to 1990 — there wasn’t nearly as much interest in cheating. The Badgers’ outstanding offensive linemen pushed defenders where they wanted them, and exceptional backs from Ron Dayne to Jonathan Taylor ran for yards and touchdowns.

It becomes increasingly difficult to win this way, especially if the goal is to win at the national level.

“I understand people wanted to see more offensive production the first few weeks,” Quinn said. “That’s the side of the ball that Luke Fickell brought in to change. There’s nothing wrong with Wisconsin’s defense. It’s always been one of the best in college football. It’s an offense that probably needed some updating to adapt to today’s college football world, and it’s winning.”

One of the dangers of success in any sport is that those who help build success become attractive candidates for attractive positions in other organizations. Fickell’s early defensive coordinator in Cincinnati, Marcus Freeman, is now the head coach at Notre Dame. Perhaps more relevant to this discussion, Brian Mason—the recruiting director who helped spot such underrated gems as cornerback Coby Bryant (a three-year veteran with the Seahawks)—has become the special teams coordinator for the Colts. Chad Bowden, who replaced Mason and helped bring in transfer running back Jerome Ford (now starting for the Browns), is the general manager of the Notre Dame football team.

Fickell sought a similar dynamic in Wisconsin’s recruiting staff: young, energetic, creative, tireless. Director of recruiting Pat Lambert, who played for Cincinnati from 2008 to 2012, did the same job for two years with the Bearcats before following Fickell to Madison. Max Stienecker became the youngest director of player personnel in college football history when he was hired at age 22 in February 2023.

It’s hard to say whether they have the eye for the talent that helped Fickell take Cincinnati from the wreckage left by Tommy Tuberville to a national powerhouse. They’ve barely had time to show us. The question is whether anyone else gets that grace.