College Football

Luke Fickell at Wisconsin: The Badgers raise their ceiling

Updated May. 31, 2023 6:44 p.m. ET

Wisconsin went shopping at the College Football Surplus and came back with an arsenal, looking fit to spit, pointy-toed, dressed to rodeo and ready to kick in the Big Ten's door.

Suited and booted, the Badgers have had enough. They're letting go of good so that they might become great.

In seven seasons and five games, former Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst put together a record of 67-26, while winning 10 games or more in four out of his first five seasons in Madison.

In his best year as a head coach, he led the Badgers to a 13-0 regular season and fell just short of winning the Big Ten title in a 27-21 loss to Ohio State. In his last full season as head coach, 2021, he won nine games.

But that was not enough. The man who played quarterback at Wisconsin — and later became a tight end coach and offensive coordinator there — helped build and sustain steady excellence at Camp Randall, an excellence that had gone on for nearly three decades. As a reward, he was fired after a 2-3 start to the 2022 season.

Luke Fickell raises the ceiling at Wisconsin

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But Chryst's success at Wisconsin didn't level up the Badgers to a Big Ten championship, nor a College Football Playoff bid, and certainly not to any national titles.

In a world in which TCU finished as national title runner-up and put up 51 on Big Ten champ Michigan, Michigan put up 45 on Ohio State at The Shoe, and Ohio State put up 52 on Wisconsin, the powers that be reached their breaking point.

In a world where the CFP is expanding from four to 12 teams and the Big Ten will grow to 16 teams — all within a year's time — the Badgers brass went searching for the person who could coach their football team into the rarified air of winning conference titles, playing in the CFP and competing for a national championship.

Naturally, they settled on a former Buckeye to lead them.

The reason Wisconsin hired Luke Fickell as its head ball coach is precisely because he's done the two things the Badgers haven't: make the College Football Playoff and win a national title.

He did both of those things as an assistant at Ohio State, sure, but even more impressive was leading Cincinnati to a CFP selection before Wisconsin could so much as sniff an invitation. So of course a program with the third-most wins in the sport without a national title would seek out a man who electric slid into the CFP with a blasphemous Group of 5 program.

And he's brought along men who many believe could bring down the devil in Georgia.

Fickell has bet on two coordinators, Mike Tressel and Phil Longo, who know that if you're gonna play with the big boys down South, let alone those Texas Playboys, you better have a fiddle in the band.

Your offense better be as explosive as Charlie Daniels standing next to Bob Wills. Your defense better be able to stop an offense dead and turn it weepy like Sara Watkins on "Long Hot Summer Day."

Tressel's defense is a carry-over from Fickell's 2021 and 2022 Cincy squads. He began coaching at South Dakota, became a grad assistant on the 2002 Ohio State national title team, and left with Mark Dantonio for Michigan State in 2004.

I've been made to understand Tressel's scheme is gonna look more like a 3-4 for anything larger than 11 personnel. Put another way, it will be the same defense that produced consensus All-American, All-Pro and NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Sauce Gardner and All-American 2021 Thorpe Award winner Coby Bryant.

And that defense — that I'm sure is gonna be running on grain alcohol — is gonna get faster than John Lee Pettimore flying down "Copperhead Road" in a big Black Dodge playing against Longo's offense in practice.

When Mack Brown said he was coming back to coach at North Carolina, he called Lincoln Riley and Kliff Kingsbury to ask which offensive coordinator he should go out and get.

"I want to be Oklahoma. That's the offense I want to run," he told Sports Illustrated in 2019. Both Riley and Kingsbury said to go get Phil Longo.

Longo turned former UNC QB Sam Howell into the best ACC quarterback north of Clemson and turned Drake Maye into a Heisman frontrunner this season.

Matter of fact, Maye is the sixth QB since 2010 to throw for 4,000 yards and 35 TDs, and also rush for 650 yards with seven TDs in a season. The others? Kyler Murray, Deshaun Watson, Marcus Mariota, Johnny Manziel and RG3. That's four Heisman winners and Deshaun Watson.

Now, Longo and former UNC O-line coach Jack Bicknell Jr. are coaching in Madison. And the running game? Longo and Bicknell turned former UNC RBs Michael Carter and Javonte Williams into the best tandem backfield in the sport since Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon at OU.

Think what Longo, Bicknell and Fickell might do with a passing game to complement junior Braelon Allen in the backfield, who has enjoyed back-to-back 1,200-yard, 11-TD seasons.

After joining the team as bowl practice began ahead of the Guaranteed Rate Bowl last season, Fickell rode Allen and Chez Mellusi for 38 rushes and 193 yards in a 24-17 win against Oklahoma State.

Wideout C.J. Williams is expected to be one of the Badgers' top receiving targets. A four-star out of powerhouse Mater Dei, he transferred to Wisconsin after spending his freshman year at USC. Just ask Josh Downs or Dazz Newsome what that might mean for Big Ten DBs. Just ask CeeDee or Dede what in tarnation that might be.

Enter Tanner Mordecai — a man who first signed to play QB for Riley at OU in 2018 — and put up back-to-back seasons of at least 3,500 pass yards, 30 TDs and 12 or fewer INTs for Southern Methodist. Another former Oklahoma QB, Nick Evers, is biding his time behind Mordecai heading into camp.

If you're sensing an offense aired from the demon lovechild of Riley's Oklahoma and Longo's North Carolina, and a defense with more kick-ass than a murderous mule, just wait until you see Wisconsin hunting shutouts and run rules.