Anonymous Big Ten coach says Wisconsin's biggest questions are off the field

Wisconsin football has certainly entered a new era over the past couple years. Two years back, in April of 2021, longtime Badger Barry Alvarez retired as the school’s athletic director, a position he’d held for 18 years after he was head football coach for 14 years. His presence loomed over that program like a monolith as undoubtedly its single largest force over the last three decades.

A year and a half after Alvarez left, new Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh, a former football player himself, decided to change directions with the football program and fired head coach Paul Chryst less than halfway through his eighth year in Madison. Chryst was obviously an Alvarez hire, so the new Luke Fickell hire marks the moment Wisconsin left the longtime coach and AD in the past for good. Starting this fall, it’s a completely new chapter of Badger ball.

Such an overhaul from how things were done up in Madison does have some folks skeptical that the McIntosh and Fickell duo will be able to produce immediate success. One anonymous coach from the Big Ten needs to see how their culture develops before he’s ready to declare the program a contender in the conference once again.

Here was the statement from that coach, procured by Athlon Sports as part of their mammoth annual preseason magazine for college football:

“The biggest questions we have are more off the field. It’s like all the Barry Alvarez traditions are off the table now — or are they? How much change is happening? That program culture was so specific for so long. How different will they recruit? We assumed the move to hire Luke was to create a program that recruited to compete with the East schools and win in Chicago and Ohio and not just build off in-state.”

He continued, noting that Fickell’s approach and style on offense is drastically different than the product Wisconsin fans are used to seeing every Saturday.

“This is the anti-Wisconsin offense. It’s gonna take a minute for everyone to adjust to it. Certainly that roster, but opposing coaches too. Just weird.”

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That’s a pretty strong hint of doubt coming off this anonymous B10 coach in regards to Wisconsin. It’s not about the talent or actual coaching ability that’s coming in for this coach, but rather, the uncertainty amid a massive changing of the guard for the entire program that has him worried.