Wisconsin hires Luke Fickell, further challenging Ohio State football in a bolstered Big
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State football’s path back to the top of the Big Ten Conference becomes a little tougher each day, and you can add Wisconsin’s hire of Luke Fickell to the list of impediments.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel first reported the Badgers had targeted the former OSU player, assistant and interim head coach. Fickell went 6-7 that season leading the Buckeyes, then 57-18 in six seasons with Cincinnati. Last season, the Bearcats became the first Group of 5 program to be invited to the College Football Playoff semifinals.
Thamel also reported Kerry Coombs, the longtime OSU assistant and most recently defensive coordinator, is Cincinnati’s interim coach.
At one time it appeared Wisconsin would promote Jim Leonhard, the alum and defensive coordinator serving as interim head coach since the firing of Paul Chryst. Instead, athletic director Chris McIntosh grabbed one of the most respected coaches in the country and one with a proven track record of lifting a program to national status.
Fickell’s hire adds further perspective to the challenges Ohio State faces in its quest to reclaim Big Ten supremacy. One day earlier, Michigan emphatically defended its status as the league’s new standard-bearer with a 45-23 victory.
Other threats are looming.
USC and UCLA are scheduled to join the Big Ten for the 2024 season. The Trojans should jump OSU in the College Football Playoff rankings Tuesday night and are playing for the Pac-12 championship. UCLA is a top-20 team which spent most of the season in the conference title hunt.
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The Big Ten is leaning towards eliminating divisions after 2023, so OSU may play those California teams as often as it currently plays Rutgers, Indiana and other lower-tier programs. Winning week to week becomes harder.
Now Fickell takes over an underachieving program, where his Big Ten roots likely fit better than in Cincinnati’s pending home in the Big 12. Wisconsin has been a quarterback away from a potential national breakthrough since at least Russell Wilson’s one-year stay, and for many years before that as well.
The defensive-minded Fickell takes over a program rooted in the same principles. If he makes the correct hire to lead his offense, Wisconsin can claw its way back to the Big Ten’s upper echelon after a recent run of mediocrity. The Badgers are about to finish outside the AP Top 25 for the third straight year and fourth in the last five.
Fickell took Cincinnati into the top 10 in consecutive years. He joins OSU’s Ryan Day and Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh as current Big Ten coaches who led teams to the playoff. They will soon be joined by USC’s Lincoln Riley and UCLA’s Chip Kelly. Fickell’s competition will be tougher in the Big Ten, but the foundation on which he can build will also be stronger.
Fickell once helped Ohio State grow into unquestionably the top program in the Big Ten. Now he could become one of the hurdles the Buckeyes have to clear to reclaim that title.
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