Luke Fickell had his first game week press conference of the season on Tuesday, and he spoke with reporters for about 20 minutes on everything leading up to week 1 against Miami (OH). One thing stood out, and it was how he explained the leadership situation among the Wisconsin players. The team has a bunch of leaders, making it impossible to pick captains.
The problem for Fickell is not that there aren't enough leaders to be captains; it's that there are too many. When it came time to narrow down the leaders to just a few to be "captains," his coaching staff couldn't do it. I felt like it would diminish the good thing they got going with plenty of players taking on the mantle of leadership.
"I feel like we have a leadership group. This a group led [team] and it's more than just specifically saying who's going to put a 'C' on their chest. By the end of the year, I would definitely say, 'these are the guys who represented us throughout the entire year in a way that we would expect...But for now I think this group is led by a bunch of guys."Luke Fickell
Wisconsin will have game captains but not team captains until the end of the year
Related: True freshmen takeover: Young players are all over the week 1 Wisconsin depth chart
The fascinating part of Fickell's plan is that each week, they will pick players to represent the team as captains, which will include the usual duties of going out for the coin toss and other game-related responsibilities, but also taking charge of that game and taking the mantle of their position group's leadership. This part isn't all that unusual to have a rotation of players that step up for games. It's the second part that might be unique to Fickell.
He plans to pick players at the end of the season to wear the 'C' or get that label for 2025. This allows the team to look back and have captains without disrupting the leadership structure throughout the season. It's an interesting idea, and hopefully it works.
Week 1 brings in the Miami (OH) Redhawks, which will be the first test to see if all that Fickell is doing and changing in the offseason will work.