Luke Fickell Hiring Signals New Era, Higher Expectations At Wisconsin

Long before University of Wisconsin Director of Athletics Chris McIntosh made the shocking decision to fire head football coach Paul Chryst, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the program’s next head coach would be defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard.

Like Chryst — and even McIntosh, himself — Leonhard checked all the boxes: along with being a talented coach and leader of men, he was a Wisconsin native who walked on and starred for the Badgers before going on to a long career in the National Football League.

A Wisconsin guy who could recruit Wisconsin kids to play Wisconsin football the Wisconsin way.

But in the end, the very same factors that made Leonhard the perfect candidate to take over the University of Wisconsin football program turned out to be the very same factors that led McIntosh to instead turn the program over to Luke Fickell instead of Leonhard who compiled a 4-3 record as interim head coach following Chryst’s dismissal.

“I owed it to this program to conduct a national search to find the best leader to position this program for long term success,” McIntosh said Monday during an introductory event that was one part press conference, one part pep rally and one part tent revival.

That turned out to be Fickell, who turned the Cincinnati Bearcats into a national power and the first program from outside the Power 5 conferences to reach the College Football Playoff.

That Wisconsin has yet to qualify for the playoff is part of the reason McIntosh made the somewhat shocking decision to fire Chryst five into his eighth season leading his alma mater.

While Chryst had compiled an 86-45 record, the Badgers seemed to have hit a lull of sorts. It had been ten years since the program won its last Big Ten title. Under Chryst, Wisconsin won the Big Ten West three times — 2016, ‘17 and ‘19 — but lost in the conference championship game each time .

Each of those seasons seemed to follow a similar script: the Badgers would roll through the usual slate of underwhelming cupcakes during the non-conference schedule before taking advantage of the West Division’s relative softness compared to the East Division but come up empty against the league’s top teams and finishing up at a non-playoff bowl game.

The excuses were always the same, too, usually along the lines of not being able to compete with Ohio State’s recruiting prowess while trotting out the usual talking points about academics.

Wisconsin, though, is no longer the program that hadn’t won a conference title or made a trip to the Rose Bowl in 31 years. In fact, nearly the same amount of time has passed since the Badgers snapped that drought in 1994, so it stands to reason that expectations should be significantly higher now than just making a bowl game, even one with the prestige of the Rose Bowl, where Wisconsin last played following the 2019 season and lost to Oregon.

That turned out to be the high-water mark of Chryst’s tenure.

The Badgers went 4-3 during the pandemic shortened 2020 season and while they finished with a respectable 9-4 record last season, they also went 2-3 against ranked opponents including losses to Penn State, Notre Dame and Michigan.

When the Badgers opened up Big Ten play this season with a blowout loss at Ohio State and a humiliating home loss to Illinois, it became clear to McIntosh that it was time for a change not just in a head coach but for the overall culture of the program.

While Barry Alvarez’s formula of building dominating front lines with in-state talent and using them to clear lanes for power runners put the Badgers on the map, the college game has evolved faster than Wisconsin has been able to keep up.

This of course is no knock on Leonhard who couldn’t be a better example of what helped get Wisconsin to this point. He’s a highly-regarded coach who has previously drawn interest from numerous programs and even flirted with a potential jump to the National Football League last season when he interviewed for the Green Bay Packers’ defensive coordinator position.

No doubt, Fickell would love to keep Leonard around and understands better than anyone what he’s going through right now.

After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Fickell found himself in the exact same situation. He’d spent nine years on the coaching staff at Ohio State, where played on the defensive line for four seasons, and was named interim head coach in 2011 when Jim Tressel was suspended and eventually resigned.

Instead of hiring Fickell permanently, the Buckeyes instead brought on Urban Meyer. Fickell chose to return to his previous role as defensive coordinator and remained in that position for four more years before taking the top job at Cincinnati.

Whether or not that will help convince Leonard to stick around remains to be seen. Fickell said the two met Sunday night and had “a great conversation” and they’ll talk again later this week.

“I told him: ‘You’ve got a lot of things to think about,” Fickell said. “‘You’ve got to figure out where you want to be in five years and where you want to be in 10 years. … That is going to help you to figure out where you want to be next year.’

“That’s not easy. There’s a lot of things we all have to be able to get over. It takes a special person in some ways to get over a lot of those things.

“I had a hard time with it. But I do believe it was the right thing for me and the way that I did it and went out about it and it helped me become who I am.

“But my way is not always the right way. It’s not the way for everybody else. But that is what it really comes down to. What is in your heart and what is in your mind?”