Luke Fickell deserved to be fired last season, and even he would admit that much. However, Chris McIntosh decided to back him up and keep him around. Well, maybe better said, it was Fickell himself who decided to keep himself around. The Athletic's Justin Williams released a free report this week about the pivotal upcoming season for Fickell. Yet, it was the story about how Fickell was almost fired, or maybe almost quit, that really stole the show.
Williams tells the story of Fickell heading back to his office after "Fire Fickell" chants rained down on him after Wisconsin fell to Iowa. The season was unraveling, and he was fully expecting athletic director Chris McIntosh to agree with the chanting fans at Camp Randall. However, Williams tells the story of McIntosh asking Fickell what he wanted, whether to quit or to press through the noise. Fickell slept on it and the next day decided to stay. Williams quotes Fickell as saying, "There’s nothing I would rather do than pull ourselves out of where we are,”
Fickell almost quit, but instead decided his desire was to find a way through. To pull the Wisconsin program back together and get it to prominence again. Unlike McIntosh, who fled as soon as he could, Fickell stuck it out, took the boos on the chin, and found a way to win the offseason.
Say what you want about Luke Fickell, you gotta respect the hell out of him to stick it out, unlike his boss.#Badgers pic.twitter.com/htR1wnd3Pd
— Scoobie227 (@Scoobie_227) July 28, 2026
Luke Fickell is now in a "do-or-die" season for Wisconsin football
Related: Wisconsin quietly brought back a position fans haven't seen under Luke Fickell
Fickell owns where things really went wrong for Wisconsin, Williams said. "The falloff isn’t a mystery. Fickell, 52, acknowledges that he and McIntosh were reluctant to embrace the modern roster-budget reality of college football." Fickell and McIntosh were clearly the men who broke it, but it was Fickell who decided he wanted to be the man to fix it.
The quote that really stuck out was not just the one above when he decided to stick with Wisconsin, but it was, "I can never quit anything in my life, but it was more than that. This is all I want to do. I’m not backing down. But we needed to do things in a different way. Otherwise, I’m not sure we can turn this thing around.”
The article goes on to explain how McIntosh and Fickell worked on a solution... more investment. And the roster money went way up. From towards the bottom of the Big Ten to towards the top. The roster actually looks dramatically different this season too. The last few years, it's looked like it has needed to cut corners; it now finally looks fairly deep in many of the position groups.
Luke Fickell isn't a quitter; in fact, he started speaking to the team about "burning the boats" and "no escape." Williams' article goes into detail about how Fickell adapted this motto, sold it to his team, and now 2026 is the year of redemption. Fickell is in a "do-or-die" season, and Wisconsin fans can respect the fact that he didn't quit and instead pivoted to find solutions. There's no going back for Fickell, and 2026 will be the ultimate "prove-it" season for him and the Wisconsin Badgers.
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