Wisconsin officially announces Phil Longo, Mike Tressel as coordinators

Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell has two key positions on his coaching staff filled out with the school officially announcing the hires Phil Longo and Mike Tressel as offensive and defensive coordinators, respectively. Longo comes from North Carolina where he held the same position under Mack Brown; Tressel is following Fickell from Cincinnati, where he served as defensive coordinator.

Longo, in particular, will bring a major stylistic change to how Wisconsin plays football. While he doesn’t have a quarterback like Drake Maye work with, expect the Badgers to lean more heavily on spreading out the field and throwing the ball down it.

It’ll be a big overhaul for a program so accustomed to packed boxes, big linemen and bruising running backs. While that won’t be entirely a thing of the past, nor an immediate change, it’s safe to assume the Wisconsin offense will certainly have a different flavor under Longo.

Tressel has coached under Fickell since 2021, when he came to Cincinnati after a lengthy tenure as a defensive assistant coach at Michigan State, where he held several positions on the staff. Tressel had actually been a defensive assistant at Cincinnati prior to taking the job at Michigan State — that time following Mark Dantonio.

He’s also the nephew of former Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel.

Fickell detailed his 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.”