If rivalry weekend didn’t deliver enough stunners for you, the action kept coming overnight and into Sunday morning.
David Shaw abruptly announced his resignation from Stanford following a 35-26 loss to BYU.
The Cardinal’s long-time head coach informed a room of six reporters per The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel: “I just informed the team I’ve coached my last game at Stanford.” In 20-plus years of postgame news conferences, that was a first for me.
Equally as stunning was the news that Wisconsin would turn to Cincinnati head coach Luke Fickell as its next leader.
For most, it was almost a foregone conclusion the Badgers would name defensive coordinator and interim coach Jim Leonhard as the next head coach.
New athletic director Chris McIntosh made huge waves when Paul Chryst was fired in October. Most Badger insiders felt the process of replacing Chryst was fumbled from the get-go, but now with Fickell coming to Wisconsin, what started as mismanaged initial steps is now considered a resounding success.
So what does this all mean for all involved?
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Luke Fickell
With the coaching roulette wheel spinning crazily over the past few years, what good and ideal jobs would be there for Fickell on the next spins?
Southern Cal, Miami, LSU, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Florida, Texas have replaced their coaches since the end of the 2020 season and by there is no guarantee Fickell would be the hot commodity in the future if Cincinnati cooled off.
Fickell may have crashed through the ceiling getting Cincinnati to the College Football Playoff last season, but the realization for Fickell is that was about as high as he could ever take Cincinnati. If Fickell’s professional goal and aspiration is to win a national championship, it wasn’t going to happen with the Bearcats.
With an uncertain future of what the Big XII’s standing is in the College Football Playoff, whether they will be seen on the same level as ACC, Big Ten, and SEC in question, Fickell’s desires are apparent with this move to Wisconsin.
Wisconsin offers Fickell stability, prestige, and a situation where if Wisconsin won the Big Ten, it would reach the College Football Playoff automatically. Fickell isn’t foreign to the Big Ten, as he spent 22 seasons at Ohio State as a player, assistant coach, and the 2011 season as interim head coach, so he knows what it takes to win there.
Wisconsin
Most people marginalize the Wisconsin program since it hasn’t won a national championship and lacks the brand power and appeal that Big Ten East powers Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan have.
In the 21st Century, Wisconsin is one of the 10 winningest programs in the country. That success includes three Big Ten Championships, five Big Ten division championships, and seven New Year’s Six bowl appearances, and 13 New Year’s Day bowl games overall.
The program understood this was a mission critical hire for their program as it was on the precipice of returning to the middle of the pack after back-to-back-to-back sub-par seasons.
With the expansion of Southern California and UCLA, the overall Big Ten West Division got a lot more difficult. Even if commissioner Kevin Warren gets rid of divisions, there is an excellent chance Wisconsin would be in a pod that would see regularly the two new West Coast members.
Chris McIntosh
McIntosh had the unenviable task of replacing “The Godfather” Barry Alvarez, who was part of Wisconsin athletics first as a head coach and later athletic director in 2004. “Il capo di tutti capi” retired last year, and had the field at Camp Randall Stadium named after him in the process.
It is easy to tip toe around and maintain what Alvarez built, an amazing foundation that has the Badgers amongst the winningest sports programs across the country.
McIntosh clearly wants the Wisconsin football brand to be on par with the best in the country, so when he saw Chryst toil away in mediocrity, he took a big risk by firing the long time Badger head coach. A move most Wisconsin fans would tell you was a shock given just how slowly the administration in Madison typically moves.
The other change of course was not naming one of Wisconsin’s favorite sons, Jim Leonhard, who was a three-time All American and part of Wisconsin coaching staff since 2016, head coach.
McIntosh made it a national search. He gave Leonhard an opportunity to win the job, but he looked at Fickell, Baylor head coach Dave Aranda, Matt Rhule who is now at Nebraska, as well as Alabama offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien.
McIntosh’s successful move landing Fickell distinguishes himself and his era from the Alvarez era but brings in some risks.
This is the first outside hire since Alvarez brought in Gary Anderson to replace Bret Bielema, which will absolutely give Badger fans some pause, considering how poorly that two-year experiment went.
There is also the chance Leonhard leaves Wisconsin and pursue either another defensive coordinator job, head coaching position, or even go to the NFL.
However, if McIntosh and Fickell are successful in retaining Leonhard as defensive coordinator, this is even a bigger home run than it is as of this writing, and potentially this hire is to McIntosh as Barry Alvarez coming from Notre Dame was to Pat Richter.
Big Ten
As the Big Ten inches closer to its new TV deals with CBS, NBC, and FOX, the league landing over the weekend both Matt Rhule at Nebraska and Luke Fickell at Wisconsin bolsters a stable of elite coaching.
As you scan the conference, you can maybe poke at the turmoil at Michigan State and wonder if Mel Tucker is the right man for that job, or look at the tumble Indiana has taken in the past two seasons. But then you remember that he’s the best coach the Hoosiers have had since Bill Mallory.
Having great coaching keeps the brands up and makes the conference very attractive. The SEC might have the best stable of coaching but the Big Ten crept extremely close this weekend and the long term outlook for the league looks positive.
Cincinnati
While it hurts losing a man like Fickell who was all about Cincinnati and took the program to heights it had never seen, Fickell leaves an amazing foundation for the Bearcats if it stays together.
They will enter the Big XII which will help its status overall nationally, but with the transfer portal we can only surmise what the impact is and who will follow Fickell to Wisconsin.
If the losses aren’t significant, and Cincinnati finds the right head coach that keeps it all together, this is a program built to win 9 or 10 games right away in the new Big XII.
