Wisconsin to retain coach Luke Fickell for the 2026 season
NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...
Wisconsin will not be searching for a new football coach after the 2025 season.
Athletic director Chris McIntosh told ESPN that Luke Fickell would be retained next season as the program invests more around him. Fickell is in his third full season with the Badgers as Wisconsin is 0-5 in Big Ten play and 2-6 overall in 2025.
"Chancellor [Jennifer] Mnookin and I are aligned on significantly elevating investment in our program to compete at highest level," McIntosh told ESPN. "We are willing to make an investment in infrastructure and staff. As important, is our ability to retain and recruit players in a revenue share and NIL era."
The former Cincinnati coach is 15-19 at Wisconsin. He was hired to replace Paul Chryst after Chryst was fired during the 2022 season.
Fickell would be owed a buyout of $25 million if Wisconsin fired him since his contract goes through the 2031 season. He came to Madison after leading Cincinnati to a College Football Playoff berth during his time with the Bearcats.
None of Wisconsin's six losses this season have been close, either. Wisconsin has lost each of them by at least 14 points and two of them by more than 30. The Badgers lost 37-0 to Iowa at home and followed that up with a 34-0 home loss to Ohio State.
After the Iowa game, Fickell offered an apology to his team.
“I apologize,” Fickell said. “I apologize to our guys to not be ready, to not have them ready, I’m dumbfounded in a lot of ways. But that’s my job. And this is a game we’ve been talking about since January and I’ve been doing a lot of things to make sure we were ready and prepared and obviously we were not.”
After losing to Ohio State, Fickell said there was "no quit in me."
Even before the Iowa game, Wisconsin students were ready to move on from Fickell in Week 4 during a 27-10 loss to Maryland. Chants of “fire Fickell” rained down at halftime of the game and even helped prompt McIntosh to publicly support his coach after the game.
Over the last four games, Wisconsin has scored just 17 total points. The Badgers dropped to 2-6 with a 21-7 loss to Oregon in Week 9 before a bye week in Week 10.
Wisconsin’s chances of making a bowl game in 2025 are grim. The Badgers have games against No. 23 Washington and No. 2 Indiana before playing Illinois and Minnesota to finish the season.
The Badgers missed out on a bowl game in 2024 after going 5-7. That snapped a bowl streak that dated back to the 2001 season when Barry Alvarez’s team went 5-7. The last time Wisconsin missed consecutive bowl games came in 1991 and 1992. Those were the second and third years of Alvarez’s tenure.
Since then, the Badgers have gone to 29 bowl games.
More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos