College Football

Luke Fickell, Wisconsin have one goal: win a championship

Updated Jul. 27, 2023 8:45 p.m. ET

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Luke Fickell and Wisconsin have the same goal in mind: win the College Football Playoff.

Wisconsin expressed that desire by giving Fickell a seven-year, $55.3 million contract to leave Cincinnati, and the head coach made no bones about that goal at Big Ten media day Thursday.

"We have one objective, and that's to play for a championship," Fickell said. "I don't think that will ever change whether it's year one, year two, three, four or five. ... I'll tell our guys as we start camp here next week, nobody outside the walls that which the guys that are there every single day, that have everything invested will define what success looks like for us. … success looks like to me when you play your best ball at the end of the year … 

"How we handle adversity, how we have the ability to grow, how we have the ability to come together, the way that which we play in the last month of the season will really help me and our program define what it [success] looks like and what it is as we move forward."

The Badgers are coming off a 7-6 season (4-5 in Big Ten play), which saw them fire head coach Paul Chryst five games into the year. Defensive coordinator and former star defensive back Jim Leonhard served as the interim coach the rest of the regular season (Fickell coached Wisconsin in its Guaranteed Rate Bowl victory over Oklahoma State); Leonhard was recently hired as a senior football analyst for Big Ten West rival Illinois.

Wisconsin went 67-26 under Chryst from 2015-22, including three Big Ten West titles and four 10-plus-win seasons.

Cincinnati went 57-18 with Fickell at the helm from 2017-22. It won 11-plus games in three of those six seasons, highlighted by a 13-0 campaign in 2021 in which the Bearcats won the AAC and made the College Football Playoff — although Alabama defeated them in the semifinal round. The year prior, Cincinnati finished 9-1, with its lone loss coming to Georgia in the Peach Bowl. Fickell was also the interim head coach at Ohio State, his alma mater, in 2011 and was on its coaching staff at some level from 2002-16.

One of the transparent changes to the Badgers' operation under Fickell figures to be their offense. Wisconsin has traditionally been a run-first team, like many Big Ten schools, with a pocket-passing quarterback (e.g. Graham Mertz, Jack Coan and Joel Stave). On the other hand, Fickell's Cincinnati teams typically deployed their quarterback (e.g. Desmond Ridder and Hayden Moore) in the running game.

Mertz, Wisconsin's primary quarterback from 2020-22, transferred to Florida this offseason, while Wisconsin brought in Tanner Mordecai (SMU and previously Oklahoma) and Nick Evers (Oklahoma), two quarterbacks with a degree of mobility, in the transfer portal.

Fickell expects the Badgers offense to look different but not unrecognizable next season.

"I think you’re going to see, yeah it’s going to look different, no doubt," Fickell said. "Whether it’s two tight ends, three tight ends, two backs in there, that may be the tradition of what Wisconsin has been and been really successful with. To the ability of being able to spread things out a little bit more, I don’t think that it was anything to do with, ‘hey, let’s change what it is that we’ve done and been really good at, and let’s bring in somebody that’s going to do something different;’ it’s more about people.

"Obviously I learned that growing up in the Midwest, and from a great former coach as well, is it’s about people. When you get the right people together, they understand that regardless of who they’re labeled to be. Whether they’re a ground-and-pound guy, whether they’re an air raid guy, what are the core values to the things that you do? And it might look different, but deep down as you dive into it, it’s still going to be about the guys up front. It’s still going to be about physicality. It’s still going to be about controlling and winning the line of scrimmage, whether it's offensively or defensively."

Why Luke Fickell raises the ceiling at Wisconsin

Regardless of how much Wisconsin's offense opens up on the outside, it continues to have one of the premier running backs in the country in Braelon Allen, who has run for 1,200-plus yards in each of his first two seasons in Madison.

Wisconsin opens the 2023 season at home on Sept. 2 against Buffalo, with its Big Ten opener coming on Sept. 22 at Purdue.

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