UW-Madison Badgers football coach Luke Fickell.
The Badgers have been boldly unsuccessful under Luke Fickell.
Athletic director Chris McIntosh’s report to the University of Wisconsin Athletic Board on Wednesday, Oct. 23, detailed accomplishments of more than a dozen teams before arriving at football, calling attention to its historically difficult schedule and top 20 run defense, but not its winless Big Ten record. That record, and the way the Badgers have appeared to be unprepared for some of those games, has led fans to call for coach Luke Fickell, and McIntosh himself, to be canned.
When McIntosh was done, board chair Doug McLeod, a professor of strategic communication, asked if there were any questions for McIntosh from the board, which is made up of faculty, alumni, students and staff members.
There were none.
You would think a panel of fiduciaries might push McIntosh to at least explain what he meant when, using vague language, he expressed a commitment to “elevating the investment into our football program to position us to compete at the highest level” in a letter to fans published two days earlier.
McLeod says he wasn’t surprised by the silence, pointing out that board members often ask their questions and discuss issues away from the meeting room. He says the group is primarily concerned with the student-athlete experience and issues of mental health, academic and career counseling and compares the board’s oversight of department staff to that of a math teacher.
“When [athletic department staff] make decisions of certain kinds, they know they’re going to have to show their work,” he says.
Of course, the group also hears reports on the department’s finances which, as McIntosh has frequently made clear, rely heavily on dollars brought in by the football operation. Revenue from football, he said in an August Milwaukee Journal Sentinel interview, “underwrites the cost of opportunity for almost all of our other sports. And so it’s imperative that football at Wisconsin is successful.”
But the Badgers have been boldly UNsuccessful under Fickell, who has not offered any evidence that he knows how to win in Madison in the same way he did at Cincinnati, where his 57-18 record made him one of the country’s most sought after coaching candidates when McIntosh hired him in 2022. And the continued slide is sure to cost not just the athletic department, but the rest of the university.
Two days after the board met, UW-Madison’s Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy (CROWE), a conservative think tank, released a report titled “The Economic Impact of Badger Football’s Declining Performance.” The report’s conclusion: “Badger Football’s poor performance could reduce its impact on the local and state economy by about one third (about $160 million for Madison and $280 million for Wisconsin).”
A lot is riding on how well a bunch of young men do at running fast and slamming into each other on fall weekends. McIntosh has indicated he has no plans to fire Fickell, and UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin says McIntosh has her “full confidence as we navigate these challenges.” And just last week, UW megadonor Ted Kellner told the Wisconsin State Journal that he thinks McIntosh is “a very good athletic director. And I think things will be vastly different next year on a number of fronts as it pertains particularly to football.”
When asked for details, Kellner deferred to McIntosh who, so far, has offered only vague assurances in his fan letter.
Is there actually a plan to right the ship, rebuild the football program, and ensure that the UW athletic department remains self-sufficient? Great question. It would have been interesting if someone on the athletic board had used their platform to ask it.
