Luke Fickell’s University of Wisconsin football coaching staff will look much different next season and, for the most part, it hasn’t been by design.
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell offered plenty of insight into his philosophy for in-state football recruiting and beyond during a lengthy one-on-one conversation in his office last week. Many of those thoughts went into a story that was published Friday. But not everything.
Some interesting nuggets were left on the cutting room floor. Here they are:
1. Barry Alvarez’s influence on Wisconsin football is considerable. He built the program into a Big Ten title contender around the idea of keeping the best players in the state, won three Rose Bowls and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. The field in Camp Randall Stadium is named after him
Given all Alvarez accomplished and his understanding of how to recruit the area, Fickell smartly has studied what worked at Wisconsin under Alvarez and used him as a sounding board. I asked Fickell whether he had consulted with Alvarez at all about how to approach recruiting or whether it had changed too much since Alvarez’s last season in 2005. Fickell said he “definitely” talked to Alvarez.
“And I’m definitely going to reach back out to him here in the next couple days or week after you’ve kind of got a little bit of this cycle just to pick his brain a little bit more, too,” Fickell said. “Because where we could say, ‘Oh, it’s changed.’ No, it’s evolving. But things don’t change-change. The people are still the people and the culture is still the culture.”
Fickell referenced Alvarez a few times during our conversation, including his success in recruiting East Coast players. Fickell said he had examined the number of in-state recruits Alvarez traditionally signed and found there to be “a wide discrepancy” depending on the talent in a given year. In 2003, for example, Alvarez signed 10 in-state players, which included five-star defensive end Justin Ostrowski and four-star tackle Joe Thomas. In 2005, Alvarez signed four players from Wisconsin. From 2015 to 2022, Wisconsin signed anywhere from three to seven in-state players on scholarship and averaged five.
There is no magic formula for the right number for Fickell. Ohio State’s recruiting classes from 2002 to 2010, when Fickell worked as an assistant coach under Jim Tressel, featured 108 signees from Ohio, an average of 12 per year, according to 247Sports, although there are far more FBS prospects in that state. Ohio State’s recruiting classes from 2017 to 2023, with Urban Meyer and then Ryan Day as its coach, featured an average of six scholarship signees from Ohio — Fickell knew both those numbers off the top of his head — as the recruiting approach broadened outward.
“It’s philosophy, but it’s also maybe what kind of players they’re producing, too,” Fickell said. “Yes, you’ve got to start with your own area. But then you’ve got to assess to say, ‘OK, this brand is going to open up a lot of things.’ What’s going to be the best fit?”
Luke Fickell’s 2024 Wisconsin class has 14 commits. (Chris Coduto / Getty Images)
2. One of the reasons in-state recruiting is so important to Fickell is because of how strong those relationships can be based on how often prospects see coaches and players, which is something he learned at his previous stops. A recruit from California might only visit Wisconsin’s campus once or twice before making a commitment decision, whereas an in-state prospect has access to more game day, practice and camp opportunities.
The way Fickell sees it, those experiences matter in the vetting process and can make a big difference in the long run.
“You know more about your kids in-state,” Fickell said. “You know what kind of competition they’re playing against, which is what we’re still learning. I think you come up with a lot less misses when you take a kid from within the state because you know a hell of a lot more about them. You take some guys from further away, I think you run a greater risk of misses, a guy panning out, a guy developing because you probably don’t know nearly as much about them.”
3. For as much as Fickell felt the need to address Wisconsin’s in-state recruiting efforts based on the way things have played out — and his transparency was evident — it’ll be way more important to judge what happens in the next cycle and beyond. The circumstances in 2024 were unique with several players. The staff has been here for less than seven months. As Fickell has said repeatedly, developing relationships takes time.
Yes, former Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst likely would have been hammered for the same results if he were still in charge. But that also would have come on the heels of missing out on three top in-state recruits in 2022 and three consecutive subpar seasons on the field. Chryst also would have been entering his ninth season leading the program.
Fickell and his staff are in the process of putting together a solid class, and in-state recruiting will remain paramount. Let’s see what happens in the 2025 class, in which the Badgers have offered six players from the state: offensive linemen Owen Strebig and Michael Roeske, tight end James Flanigan, cornerback Tre Poteat, linebacker Cooper Catalano and kicker Erik Schmidt.
4. Fickell has put in the time to better understand what some of those areas for recruiting success might be based on Wisconsin’s history. Though the 350-mile radius from Wisconsin’s campus remains important, there will be other states from which the Badgers need to pull players. Fickell cited Florida and Ohio as the two most successful states outside that range for Wisconsin in the past 20-25 years, which the 247Sports recruiting database confirmed.
According to 247Sports, the Badgers have signed 45 players from Florida since 2000, which represents the second-highest total of any state behind Wisconsin. Twenty-one of those players were defensive backs, and seven were wide receivers. There have been 40 signees from Ohio, including 12 receivers and eight defensive linemen. That state should be particularly fruitful for Fickell given the ties he and many of his staffers have to it as coaches and recruiters.
Fickell cautioned that attempting to track scholarship offers from his staff can be tricky in this day and age because a player who posts an offer from Wisconsin on social media either might not actually have an offer or might not have a committable one. But what I found from the 247Sports database seemed to reveal some interesting trends. Wisconsin had offered scholarships to 30 prospects from Florida, by far the most in the 2024 recruiting class and the most for the Badgers in that state since 2018. Twenty-seven of those offers reportedly had come from the new staff.
Wisconsin had offered more scholarships to prospects in Pennsylvania — 16 — than in any other year during the online recruiting rankings era. Eleven of those offers had come from the new staff, presumably because of the connections of safeties coach Colin Hitschler, who is a Philadelphia native. Three players from the state are committed in 2024, with four-star cornerback and top target Omillio Agard set to announce his college decision July 1.
“We’ve got to be careful not to be too spread out,” Fickell said. “But the power of the motion W, the power of the brand was even greater than I realized. So I think we’ve just got to after a year of recruiting, a true year, we’ve got to assess a little bit more. Because it does come down to relationships.”
GO DEEPER
One-on-one with Luke Fickell: How does Wisconsin’s coach view Badgers recruiting now?
5. Fickell said he learned a great deal about what Wisconsin has to offer during the June official visits, citing how well the current players sell themselves and the program and how beautiful the campus is in the summer. He stressed how important winning a significant portion of those recruiting battles for players visiting campus on an official trip was to the success of the program. But he and his staff will do a lot of reflection about when to set up official visits for prospects in the future based on how this first try went.
As I referenced in the story last week, cornerback Vernon Woodward committed to Wisconsin but still had official visits planned for Illinois and UCF and flipped his commitment to the Illini. Although Fickell can’t discuss recruits until they sign under NCAA rules, he wondered in hindsight whether the staff shouldn’t accept commitments from someone coaches aren’t sure will stick. He acknowledged that he doesn’t consider someone committed if that player is still taking visits.
But how does Wisconsin decide when to have specific players on campus? There were 17 players on official visits the first week, 11 the second week and four the third week. Fickell said he would evaluate whether it was worth pushing some visits until the end of June but at the same time acknowledged Wisconsin might have lost a recruit because the Badgers didn’t have him up during the first week. At the time of our conversation, there were 15 players who had taken official visits who remained publicly uncommitted: five defensive backs, five defensive linemen, two offensive linemen, two running backs and a linebacker.
“You’re starting to recognize, depending on who you’re going to recruit and who you’re going to be battling with that you’re going to have to take the emotional roller coaster,” Fickell said. “Meaning if you’re going to battle with some of these guys and you’re going to say it’s four of the top schools in the Big Ten, we’re going to have to take that first week because that’s the only week they have open. Because you’re going to take your shot at it.
“So I think that what I’m recognizing here is the battles are far greater. We got to a point at Cincinnati where maybe you weren’t having as many of those battles. You were ID’ing some really good players that didn’t have a bunch of other visits maybe. So I’ve got to recognize and see that and you’ve got to balance, do we want to get in this boat? Because some of these guys, you get in the boat and it’s going to be a long ride. So you’re trying to evaluate, is that worth it for your program or not?”
6. Fickell consistently has made it clear he wants to be able to recruit and develop high school players. But he also is willing to be realistic about the types of prospects he pursues as he adapts to the changing college football landscape with the transfer portal.
Wisconsin underwent a drastic roster shift this offseason after Fickell and his coaches arrived by bringing in 13 scholarship transfers before spring practices began. Seven of those transfers were quarterbacks and wide receivers as the Badgers attempted to quickly upgrade and add depth at those positions.
Future offseasons might not feature as much movement, which is something Fickell likely would prefer. But transfers can help to offset potential high school misses while allowing the staff to be pickier about whom it pursues in recruiting.
“I think the thing that you notice is sometimes if you don’t think guys are the right ones, there is an opportunity in January to see what it is that you happen to need, whether it’s late in the recruiting cycle of the February signing day or even the transfers,” Fickell said. “I think that’s going to be in coaches’ heads based on not having to overstretch for something that they might not think fits. It will be based on your numbers or based on what it is that you’re looking for.”
