For the last three years under head coach Luke Fickell, the Wisconsin Badgers have played uninspired, disappointing and frankly embarrassing football.
Under Fickell, losing has become the norm. There have been beatdowns at the hands of iconic programs, undisciplined defeats to lesser teams, heartbreakers to the nation’s top teams and no-shows in rivalry games. But Saturday’s 37-0 loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes may have topped them all.
In a game that Wisconsin spent all offseason preparing for, the Badgers were absolutely bludgeoned by a program long-considered their equal. The ever discouraging result may have cemented Fickell’s fate at Wisconsin.
Iowa came into enemy territory, easily took Wisconsin’s lunch money and in front of a Camp Randall faithful that has become increasingly distraught, feasted on the Badgers all night long.
Wisconsin has been a team with no identity for the better part of three years now, and after yet another face-searing loss, it leaves everyone involved asking where the program goes from here.
Fickell and the Badgers needed this game, yet fell completely flat. Beating Iowa, one of Wisconsin’s true rivals, would have been a challenge, surely. But it was seen as a doable feat.
All offseason, Fickell used last season’s 42-10 blowout loss at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium as motivation. Players did 42 pushups after each spring practice as a reminder of the pain felt by allowing the Hawkeye offense to put up 42 points last season.
“There’s no doubt that what happened last year is something that’s fresh on the minds of everybody on this team,” Fickell said before the game.
“The focus is understanding and recognizing obviously what happened last year and what it is that we need to do to change all that happened last year,” Fickell continued. “It'll be a physical, tough, hard-nosed game, nothing different than what you would expect from an Iowa-Wisconsin football game.”
With a boot-shaking schedule awaiting them, including meetings with three top 10 teams, Wisconsin had an opportunity to use this rivalry game to steal a win and form some semblance of momentum going forward.
But forget winning, Wisconsin didn’t even compete. Instead of conquering last year’s humiliation, the Badgers played without any fight, doubling down on their incompetence in a way that proves last year's loss was not an anomaly, but rather a true indicator of the state of the program.
With this horrifying loss, Wisconsin football has officially descended into the darkest days of the Fickell era. Years of frustration directed at the program’s lack of progress have given way to a feeling of all-out hopelessness.
“That’s as low as it can be. I apologize,” Fickell said after the game. “I’m dumbfounded in a lot of ways, but that’s my job. This is a game we’ve been talking about since January. It was something that, emotionally, we knew we had to be ready for, and we were not. So, I’m crushed, disappointed in myself and our team.”
Wisconsin, with a coach that was supposed to propel them to the top, has been clawing at the bottom.
There were back-to-back November defeats to then Big Ten bottomfeeders Indiana and Northwestern in Fickell’s first season, sparking initial doubts into whether he had what it takes to elevate Wisconsin to the next level.
Last year, Wisconsin’s five-game, season-ending losing streak, complete with the Iowa abomination and a disheartening 24-7 home loss to Minnesota, intensified conversations regarding Fickell’s capability. With Wisconsin finishing 5-7 and missing a bowl game for the first time in 22 years, it was the program’s lowest point in decades. It felt like a genuine lowpoint.
But in his third year, Fickell has found a way to dig a once proud program into an even deeper hole. In Week 3, Wisconsin was destroyed by Alabama. Then, at home against Maryland, a game that Wisconsin would traditionally win with ease, the Badgers fell completely flat, losing 27-10. Next came a 24-10 loss on the road to Michigan and finally the monstrosity last week against Iowa.
For decades, Wisconsin and Iowa have used each other as comparatives. Both known as traditional Big Ten teams who thrive on burly offensive lines, power rushing-attacks and hard-nosed, successful defenses, the annual meeting for the Heartland Trophy was a reliable indicator for which program was playing their brand of football better.
In the ten battles between the Badgers and Hawkeyes pre-Fickell, Wisconsin had won seven times, including four straight between 2016 and 2019. But in Fickell’s time, Wisconsin has now lost all three battles.
In the last two, Iowa has bullied Wisconsin at the form of football that the Badgers played so well for decades. In 2024, Iowa had their way with Wisconsin, rushing for 329 and five touchdowns. The 32 point difference was Iowa’s largest margin of victory over Wisconsin since 1968. A year later, after an offseason of dwelling on it, Wisconsin was once again unable to stop the Hawkeyes and their run.
The results against Iowa lead to the realization that in Fickell’s time, Wisconsin has become a team that simply does nothing well.
Over the course of the season, Wisconsin’s offense has gone from bad to worse. By committing a series of comedic, back-breaking first quarter turnovers, the unit effectively shot themselves in the foot. Out of Wisconsin’s 12 drives, three resulted in turnovers and none went longer than 40 yards.
At 15.5 points per game, Wisconsin’s offense ranks 115th in the FBS and last in the Big Ten. Offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes' offense was supposed to stabilize a unit that had struggled in former offensive coordinator Phil Longo’s attempts to modernize the offense. Instead, Grimes’ offense leaves Wisconsin without an identity and even worse than he found it.
And Wisconsin’s defense, which was never given a fair shot due to the offense’s first quarter turnover merry-go-round, was out-physicaled and exposed by Iowa’s offense. Wisconsin’s run defense was once seen as the silver lining of the group. But the Hawkeyes ran all over Wisconsin for 210 yards and four touchdowns.
The Badgers have now lost nine straight games to power conference opponents and have proven incapable of sticking with even solid competition.
But it’s not the fact Wisconsin is losing that is the problem here. With the disappointing season Wisconsin was coming off and a schedule featuring six AP Preseason Top 25 teams, very few expected a stellar season.
It’s that week after week, Wisconsin performs with little poise or fight. The Badgers have been underdogs in four of their six games this season, yet play without a chip on their shoulder. Wisconsin begins games unprepared and devoid of energy and walks off the field looking lost and defeated.
Coaches and players say the same things every week, repeating tropes of leadership, finding an identity and playing together. Yet their on-field performance shows Wisconsin is not only no closer to success than the first day Fickell walked through the door, but farther away from it than at any point this century.
As a result, the mystique that surrounds Wisconsin football has been almost completely exhausted in the Fickell years. When that is gone, what are you left with?
The fact of the matter is in recent years, Wisconsin has plummeted so far that the most accurate way to describe the state of the Badgers would be hopeless. It is a jarring reality for a highly respected program that spent decades consistently churning out successful seasons while developing excellent players. Yet it is a reality seated in truth rather than hot take paranoia.
The point has come where firing Fickell appears like the only rational decision. At the season’s beginning, it seemed more than realistic to allow the once up-and-coming head coach at least a few more seasons to finish what he started. But the pathetic results he continues to give has led to a collective, and rational, turning by a passionate fanbase. Barring a massive turnaround, it now feels inevitable that he will not be the coach next season.
For Wisconsin to fire Fickell this season, it would cost the roughly university $27.5 million. But each week Fickell leads Wisconsin is a week in which the program falls deeper into mediocrity and further from relevance.
In his time with the media, Fickell has become more exasperated as the losses pile on.
“There is no such thing as an easy fix, I guess,” he said after the Iowa game. “This is not gonna be an easy fix.”
But the writing has been on the wall for weeks now, and as the program he’s leading continues to find new lows, it is becoming more likely Fickell will not be the one to lead the fix.
