48-year NFL Draft streak comes back to bite Wisconsin, make HC Luke Fickell’s seat hotter originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Despite Wisconsin Badgers‘ football coach Luke Fickell being given another chance to turn the football program around this fall, his team’s transition of ex-players into the NFL during this draft cycle was nonexistent.
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Since at least 1978, at least one player had been selected in every NFL Draft until this past weekend in Pittsburgh, Pa. In a nutshell, this is unheard of for a program like the Badgers, the same team that until two years ago, was consistently in the postseason with six-plus-win seasons following
Now, Fickell is at a crossroads.
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“I’m kind of saying, ‘Look, guys, we got to focus on the now,” Fickell told ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg. “We got to make sure that everybody that’s in this thing is committed and aligned, and the future will take care of itself,” Fickell said. “A part of that is how we play. We got to do some things to be able to make sure we put the product out there to win.”We’re not shying away from saying: It’s about winning.”
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So far, Fickell has done anything but win over the last two seasons, especially last year.
The Badgers stumbled to a 4-8 finish despite a brief, late-season surge that included a home upset win in late-November against the eventual nine-win Illinois Fighting Illini.
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The spark to turn things around, though, hasn’t come.
At least not yet.
“There is no such thing as an easy fix, I guess,” Fickell told reporters last October. “Right? I don’t know. This is not going to be an easy fix. Pound the rock is the idea — something has to break at some point in time. And I’m not gonna say I thought tonight [against the Iowa Hawkeyes] was an opportunity for that, but every night, every Saturday, is an opportunity for that, and it did not happen today. It did not happen tonight.”
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We’ll see if Fickell is the right answer in Madison. So far, though, from college to the pros, it hasn’t been a pretty sight.
