Every year, Athlon Sports puts out an anonymous Big Ten coaches report, with a couple of sensational quotes about each program. These are real quotes from real coaches, and the two listed for Luke Fickell and Wisconsin are absolutely disrespectful. We already knew Luke Fickell would have to prove the doubters wrong, but usually, coaches have a bit more respect for each other.
We won't quote the full quotes in this article out of respect for Athlon Sports, so feel free to click this link to find the whole article. However, the first one is about how the problem has been blamed on the quarterback, but there's no way that can be true with how bad the Badgers were everywhere. "They scored 81 points in nine conference games. I don’t care who your quarterback is. That speaks to a lot of bigger issues than just the quarterback position."
Wisconsin has gained zero respect in the Big Ten under Luke Fickell
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The first quote says the whole product was bad, not just one position. Which isn't as disrespectful as the second quote and has some truth to it. However, Wisconsin's defense was pretty solid last season. If the defense had problems, it was often due to the offense leaving them absolutely out to dry.
The second one is where things get a bit more juicy. It's more targeted specifically at Luke Fickell and, I guess, Mike Locksley. "Truthfully, I was surprised that both Wisconsin and Maryland decided to run it back with their head coaches. I wasn’t really impressed with either one of those teams."
The anonymous coach goes on to say that maybe the administration just didn't have a plan for a new coach, so they let the bad coach continue on into a new season. Yikes. Also, Locksley is probably wondering why he caught a stray in the Wisconsin section.
The reality is, both coaches may have anonymously been disrespectful to the Wisconsin Badgers and Luke Fickell; the Badgers haven't done a lot to garner respect. Wisconsin won only four games last season and only two in the Big Ten. There's no reason other coaches should respect the Badgers. However, hopefully, this season Luke Fickell proves even these two coaches wrong.
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