Luke Fickell details schedule since taking Wisconsin job

Wisconsin made a splash with its decision to hire Luke Fickell away from Cincinnati. Seen as one of the best coaches in the game after having made the College Football Playoff with a Group of Five team, Fickell is expected to have a huge impact in Madison.

In the meantime, he took the program over at one of the busiest times of the year for a college program. Between the coaching transition, making hires, and the holidays, this is an incredibly busy time of year, as Fickell explained.

“I can tell you this; I came here on whatever day that was — these guys said the 17th, 27th or 21st — I haven’t been back home,” Fickell said. “Seen my family one time. I’ll go to Christmas out in Arizona with this team and not my family. All things that you choose to do because you feel like it’s what you need to do for this family.”

At this point, there isn’t enough time to get everything done that needs to. At the same time, he needs to not overwork himself, otherwise, he won’t be as good of a leader as he possibly can be.

“And even all that time that you’re spending without other people, like, there’s still not enough time in the day. So, I think that more than anything, you just — I got to figure out a way to get some structure, especially in these first three, four weeks and where it’s going to go in the future because you can spin your wheels and spend all this time and you can tell everybody, ‘Well, I spent 14 hours,’ and the reality is, if you don’t have the energy when you walk back in this building to be around your players and the guys that are going to count on you to lead them, then who cares if you stayed up all night?” Fickell continued.

“So I got to find a balance to making sure that we’re getting the work done we need to have done, but we’re also here to be able to provide the energy and the emotion that when we walk in this building, these guys understand what it’s all about.”

Luke Fickell on the Wisconsin blueprint

There has been a blueprint for success at Wisconsin. It’s one that Fickell thinks is similar to what he did at Cincinnati.

“The same blueprint that they’ve had here is really what we built, I think, at Cincinnati and it’s been a philosophy. I’m not saying you don’t have to continue to evolve, because you do. You know, I think the big thing about us coming in here is we want to embrace and grasp all the incredible things that they’ve done and the way that which they’ve done them,” Luke Fickell said.

“But you know, also enhance and evolve in a lot of the things that we feel like needed to continue to grow, whether that’s, you know, the NIL world, a little bit of the ‘How do you manage the roster world,’ to, ‘How do you play offense,’ role. I mean, there’s a lot of things that — you don’t have to change things but you got to evolve in a lot of the things that you do and I think that’s what we want to be able to do.”