You cannot put a price on peace. There is no relief coming for as long as the University of Wisconsin-Madison decides that Luke Fickell is a respectable Power Four head football coach. His teams are never prepared entering any games. They do not beat ranked teams for the life of them. Even more concerning, they may not win a game for the rest of the season because this offense is so worthless.
So when Fickell took to the podium after Wisconsin's latest huge embarrassing failure after falling to the Michigan Wolverines 24-10 on the road, his brain was either in a Dan Wetzel pretzel or was more cooked than Frank Reich's coaching the Carolina Panthers. The man lives to contradict himself. Word salad is his favorite salad. Whatever he spews into a microphone must be cleaned up in hazmat suits.
What on god's green earth is he trying to say here? It is like competing competitively in competitions.
"Going to take a hell of a lot of effort, a hell of a lot of toughness and most importantly a hell of a lot of competitive spirit."
Fickell is better off punching a wall than telling people about effort, toughness and competitiveness.
Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell says it's "going to take a hell of a lot of effort, a hell of a lot of toughness and most importantly a hell of a lot of competitive spirt" to get through these tough times.
— Jesse Temple (@jessetemple) October 4, 2025
His frequent usage of hell means he is living in it. This is not The Good Place, Wisconsin fans. It is The Bad Place, so enjoy the melted frozen yogurt your stooge of a head coach is continuing to provide. It needs to end, just like every other horrible coaching tenure gone awry in any sport, college or pro. There is losing the plot, and then there are coaches like Fickell who have no clue what a plot even is.
You almost feel bad for the guy, except for the fact he is blowing his dream job in the worst way ever.
Luke Fickell cannot be this clueless that is so far over for him at Wisconsin
At a coach's core, they are supposed to be teachers. What is this team even learning under this substitute teacher anymore? We can only watch the same movie in class over and over again before we may have to question if this is Ned Schneebly is or it is actually Dewey Finn. If we want to include managers, coaching is a position of servitude. How is he serving this team making awful decisions?
Fickell cannot be trusted to have his team prepared. He cannot be trusted to figure out who the right starting quarterback is anymore. Heck, better yet, hell, because that is what he loves to say now, can this man even screw in a lightbulb? This lights are going out on his coaching career at Wisconsin. He should have been fired two weekends ago for his disaster class of a showing at home vs. Maryland.
For now, just look at what he has allowed Wisconsin football to become. With Northwestern beating UCLA last week, and the Bruins looking the part this week vs. Penn State, shockingly, Fickell leads the worst team in the Big Ten. This is rock bottom. He got great effort out of Mike Tressel's defense, but somehow managed to make it about himself with another boneheaded doofus coaching catastrophe.
What is the point in this anymore? Giving him a microphone to talk into is merely enabling at this time.