Luke Fickell offers anticipatory feelings on facing Ohio State at Camp Randall for first time

To say there’s history between freshly-minted Wisconsin leader Luke Fickell and the Ohio State Buckeyes is putting it lightly.

Fickell spent his collegiate playing career with the Buckeyes, and started his coaching career as a graduate assistant in Columbus in 1999. After a pitstop in Akron from 2000 to 2001, Fickell would remain with Ohio State until 2016, working his way up to the team’s defensive coordinator, and even serving as their interim head coach for a period.

After finally leaving Columbus for the Cincinnati Bearcats, Fickell would spent the next few years of his career rebuilding their program, before being tasked to take over Wisconsin this past offseason. Now with Ohio State firmly in his vision once again, Fickell elaborated on what it’ll feel like when the Buckeyes come to Camp Randall this season to play the Badgers.

“I’ll tell you what, the most important thing is I want to make sure it’s not about anything about me. … If that can take the focus off of, hopefully the emphasis of how important and how big the game is, then so be it, but it’s still going to be about the guys on the field. That’s to me, what I want,” explained Fickell at Big Ten Media Days. “We’ve talked about, and we do things on rivalries, and I’m not trying to create a new rivalry. We all know you have to beat the best to be the best, and at some point in time you’re going to get those opportunities to play Ohio State, or play Michigan, who’s won it the last two years, and that’s when you have to be at your best as well.

“I know for me, I’ll have a lot less friends. You know, because there’s no in-between like, ‘Hey, we’re rooting for you all year, all games but one,’ but then, I’m not sure I have a whole lot of room for friends anymore. But I’ve kind of known that. I’ve only got a few select, really good friends. I assume that they’ll be rooting for (Wisconsin), but I’m not even going to ask.”

Whether or not Fickell’s friends are rooting for him remains to be seen, but Wisconsin will still give their best to attempt to defeat Ohio State. If they can get a victory in their coach’s first attempt against the Buckeyes, that’ll be all the fanbase needs to know.

Ohio State helped build Luke Fickell’s career, but now they’ll be an obstacle he tries to overcome year-in and year-out, even if the respect will always be there.