Thoughts on the Badger coach

An interesting weekend for the Badger Football team that started with a loss to the Minnesota Golden Gophers for the second year in a row, ended with the dawn of a new era.

The program’s second-straight loss against the Gophers was enough for Wisconsin brass, including new Athletic Director Chris McIntosh, to declare they had seen enough in the four games Wisconsin alum and former NFL safety Jim Leonhard had as the head coach, to move in a different direction.

Over seven games, Leonhard went 4-3 with wins against Northwestern, Purdue, Maryland and Nebraska. Many Wisconsin fans were hopeful the interim tag would be removed during the offseason and Leonhard would serve as the Badgers’ coach for the forseeable future.

However, when Luke Fickell’s name was thrown into the ring, things changed. Fickell earned the Paul “Bear” Bryant Coach of the Year as well as seven other national coaching awards in 2021 for leading the Cincinnati Bearcats to the College Football Playoff.

Fickell was reportedly pursued in 2021 by schools like USC, LSU, Notre Dame and Oklahoma but he declined those jobs in favor of staying at Cincinnati another year. In my opinion, the Fickell hire is a home run. The guys has plenty of experience recruiting throughout the midwest and has proven his ability to build a successful program at a university that in all likelihood has less resources than a bigger school like Wisconsin.

Fickell has said in the past that recruiting needs to begin within a 300 mile radius of the campus. I’m excited to see what that plus his Ohio-area ties can bring to Wisconsin. There are already rumors that Fickell will be bringing a host of recruits that were formerly committed to Cincinnati with him to Wisconsin.

As great as I feel about the program moving forward, I feel equally as bad for Leonhard who has declined jobs at SEC schools and head coaching opportunities at others to stay at Wisconsin. He was seemingly in line to take over the program but now, it’s unclear if he will even be included in Fickell’s coaching staff.

The move, in my eyes, was a necessary one as the Badgers previous head coach in Chryst was a hire that was supposed to be one that was linked to a Wisconsin style of football. That time has come and gone though and now, more than ever, it was time to throw a haymaker and see what comes of it.

At the end of the day, I hope Leonhard can find the head coaching job he deserves somewhere.

Speeding

Through

L

ife