Luke Fickell details vision for program, lays out philosophy

Luke Fickell is now in command in Madison. After six successful years at Cincinnati, he has officially taken over as Wisconsin’s next head coach. The job starts now, though, as he must find a way to get his new program in contention, both in the Big Ten and nationally. Fickell knows it’s a long road ahead but, from what he said Monday, he’s ready to hit the ground running and achieve special things with the Badgers.

During his introductory press conference, Fickell laid out the schematics for how he plans to reach success as the Badger’s head man. He said he doesn’t know yet know what work needs to be done but only that there is a lot of work to do. To him, that’s the beauty of his profession as he tries to make Wisconsin one of the last teams standing each season.

“There’s always work to be done and I think that’s what excites you as a coach,” said Fickell. “You could be at any program and you’re not where you wanna be. There’s one program at the end of the year that’s where they want to be. And then they’ve got a lot of work to do to be able to repeat what they’re doing. It’s the uniqueness of what it is that we choose to do.”

Fickell started his head coaching career 10-15 over two seasons, one at Ohio State and the other at Cincinnati. From there, whatever work he chose to focus on with his team seemed to do the trick. The Bearcats never lost more than three games over his remaining five seasons as they went 53-10.

Now, Fickell has to find a way for that success to translate to inside Camp Randall. That’s the only way the Badgers will be able to achieve the one, lofty milestone he has for the program as of now.

“We’ve got one objective, one goal. It’s to play for a championship,” Fickell said. “I said that when I started in Cincinnati. That is open-ended but it gives you a lot of flexibility. If you have an opportunity in this league to play for a championship? Amazing things can happen. I think you’ve just got to stay focused and know that that’s what it comes down to.”