The Wisconsin Badgers may truly be back, and the first game of 2026 is still over a week away. A new ranking just came out that is so Wisconsin that maybe things are actually restoring to normal. Wisconsin is listed as the heaviest team in football based on average roster weight. Read that again: the Wisconsin Badgers are the heaviest team in all of college football. The Sickos Committee has dubbed the Badgers "The Biggest Beefy Boys."
If that doesn't make you smile, check your pulse. The Badgers became famous, became good, became known for having the biggest, meanest, toughest dudes in all of college football. If the Badgers were going to beat you, it was going to be in the trenches. On the defensive line and the offensive line, filling holes on defense and creating them on offense.
Over and over, the Badgers would just pound their opponent into the ground. It wasn't flashy, it wasn't sexy, it was mean-nasty football. And it took big Wisconsin fed dudes to do it. Did Luke Fickell finally make it happen again? He actually has been working on this exact thing both last season and this season.
THE BIGGEST BEEFY BOYS - Heaviest FBS teams by average roster weight. 🥩 pic.twitter.com/2O9eWQG9GE
— Sickos Committee (@SickosCommittee) August 24, 2026
Luke Fickell has intentionally added more weight to the Badgers in two position groups
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It was actually before the 2025 season that Fickell said he learned in the Big Ten that you can't have interior defensive linemen who are under 300 pounds. If they are under that, they better be barely under it and make up for it in other ways.
So last season, he pushed for more weight on the defensive line. This year, he's finally got his wish. There are only two interior defensive linemen who are under 300 pounds, and one is true freshman Djidjou Bah. Fickell would tell you that he will be over 300 in due time. The other is DeNigel Cooper who makes up for it with pure strength and athleticism.
Fickell is the most pleased with his interior linemen. He said it's the group that has him looking forward to the season and that the rotation is nine-deep. That's incredible news for Wisconsin.
In the other place, he worked to add weight, and with the help of Eric Mateos, he is on the offensive line. This is the first year since Fickell became the head coach that there isn't a single offensive lineman under 300 pounds. There's not even a walk-on offensive lineman that's less than 300 pounds. The lightest guy is right at 300, and that's Cam Clark, who's a bit buried on the depth chart.
The Badgers are big boys, especially in the trenches. Yet, the Badgers are big across the board; there are only 16 total players under 200 pounds on the roster, and only one running back is under that (JuJu Pope). It truly looks like a roster in terms of weight, from the old days. Somewhere Barry Alvarez is smiling.
If you were looking for a reason to think Wisconsin may be turning the corner and getting back to what made Wisconsin famous, this is it.
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