Wisconsin hasn’t seen their regular success in the Big Ten.
When it comes to the Wisconsin Badgers for the 2025 season, ‘expectations’ has been a key word tossed around.
Wisconsin has fallen short of expectations in back-to-back seasons, finishing only 5-7 in 2024 and snapping its bowl streak of 22 years in the process. It summed up a disappointing start for head coach Luke Fickell in Madison, as he came over in search of championships and has fallen far short of that goal.
For years, Wisconsin had been seen as a perennial contender under previous coaches, even going 13-1 in 2017 under former head coach Paul Chryst. Now, those expectations don’t seem to be the same.
Overall, is the school’s prestige slipping?
“Wisconsin’s a team that, if you go back to the early 2000s, maybe they can finally make that jump to being a national title contender,” CBS Sports’s Bud Elliott said. “They would consistently win eight, nine, even 10 ball games under Barry Alvarez. I don’t really have those types of expectations. The additions of Washington, Oregon, and USC to the Big Ten kind of pushes them down a little bit in terms of program prestige, and it makes the ceiling a little bit harder to cap for them to push up and win the league.”
Oregon and USC have especially raised the bar for prestige, as they’ve come in and immediately become top powers in the recruiting world. Additionally, Oregon was the No. 1 team in college football heading into the College Football Playoff last year.
But, for Wisconsin, they need to focus on other issues first, starting off with their consistency in comparison to their rivals.
“But, if I’m Wisconsin, why can’t we beat Iowa? Why can’t we be consistently a little bit better than Minnesota? What about being better consistently than Nebraska? I think [Luke] Fickell’s a good football coach, but I do think that the staff he has at Wisconsin is probably not as good as the staff that he had in a couple of those years at Cincinnati when they really built a special team. And a lot of those guys now that he had with him at Cincinnati are scattered off to the NFL, or they’re actually at Notre Dame,” Elliott continued.
Wisconsin has still found a way to recruit really well in recent years, maintaining top-30 classes even with the disappointing seasons. Fickell has also found some gems on his coaching staff, such as offensive line coach A.J. Blazek.
But, in an era when the transfer portal is a necessity, the Badgers have failed to find success like other teams, costing them dearly. And that’s where their rivals have taken a step ahead.
Wisconsin brought in a big load of transfers this offseason, but it’s unclear what the ceiling is for the group. The incoming players will likely end up deciding how Wisconsin’s 2024 season will end up going, so the pressure is on.