Packers legend crushes Luke Fickell over radio, calling Badgers tenure 'a money grab'

Fact: You cannot beat anyone until you stop beating yourself. For the Wisconsin Badgers, this football program, athletic department and university administration do not seem even remotely interested in getting this thing right. Much has been made about the pitfalls of Luke Fickell's tumultuous tenure in Madison. Whether it be recruiting, coaching or those mind-numbing press conferences, it is all there.

However, there may be something even bigger at play than just the sheer size of Fickell's buyout. Leave it up to former Green Bay Packers star and popular Milwaukee radio host Mark Chmura to get down to the real nitty gritty. He reveals that Wisconsin is doing irreparable damage in the recruiting department when it comes to how they go about getting players into the Badgers football program.

Having had a son who was recruited and offered by Wisconsin before shows an ugly side of all this.

Mark Chmura feels Luke Fickell taking Wisconsin job was "a money grab"

The nature of invite-only camps is not the end of the world, but this may be all that Wiconsin does.

"They have invite-only camps, where the kids have to pay to go to them, but it's talented kids. This is how my son Dylan at Michigan State went to one of these camps and was offered a scholarship after going to that camp. So I know people who go to these camps and they go, "The talent they have here is a joke. Who are they recruiting?" It's a joke. The attention to detail isn't there."

Chmura then went for the knockout punch here by saying that this job was "a money grab by Fickell".

"And to me, I don't know, it just feels like a money grab by Fickell because he didn't want to put the work in. And then how do you address, I mean, what does this say about Wisconsin? They fired James Franklin at Penn State. They fire [Billy] Napier at Florida. They fire [Brian] Kelly at LSU, right? Who have done far better than Fickell has... I mean, is Wisconsin a real program?"

Here is what Chmura had to say about Fickell and the Wisconsin on Tuesday for ESPN Milwaukee.

It may not be be everything, but it does show that Wisconsin is not doing what it can in recruitment.

Wisconsin keeps recruiting like a Group of Five team under Luke Fickell

What Chmura said may be the connective tissue that ties all of this together. Fickell seems to be operating from a principle that what worked for him at Cincinnati is going to one day work for him at Wisconsin. Cincinnati has since joined the Big 12 since he left, but the Bearcats were not a Power Four team when Fickell was coaching there. Scott Satterfield finally has UC back in a great place.

For a guy who played for Ohio State, how can Fickell be so obtuse to recruiting top-tier talent? It is fear of rejection? Is it fear of failure? Maybe it is just something else entirely? Either way, it has totally eradicated Wisconsin's once-strong pipeline to the NFL. Wisconsin used to get around three-to-five players drafted annually. Now that output has dropped down to only two players a year under Fickell.

In the end, this just needs to end. There are not enough high-quality players in-state for Wisconsin to mail it in quite like this in recruitment. Fickell may have the talent to win in the MAC, but this is a Big Ten program, one that used to mean something! It is why the university needs to come to its senses, buy him out, and see if someone like James Franklin, Alex Golesh or Brian Kelly will want to take over.

Franklin and Kelly will recruit, while Golesh seems to be more than ready for his next big opportunity.