Beginning his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Ohio State in 1999 after a very brief NFL career, Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell has experienced the highs and lows any coach or player could in college football. Throughout that near 30 years of collegiate experience, Fickell has had his fair share of run-ins with the Michigan football team.
Fickell was a nose guard on the defensive line for the Buckeyes from 1993 to 1996. He then went on to a one-year NFL career with the New Orleans Saints in 1997 that was cut short due to an ACL tear.
At Ohio State, Fickell played against the Wolverines four times and won once. The infamous 1993 game where Michigan came in as underdogs against the then-No. 5 Ohio State ended in a 28-0 upset and Fickell’s first loss to the Wolverines. In 1994 the Buckeyes got revenge, but underdog Michigan struck again in 1995 and 1996 to send Fickell out of Columbus with a 1-3 record as a player.
After a year off, Fickell returned to Columbus for one season as a graduate assistant before spending the next two seasons with Akron as the defensive line coach. As an interior lineman, Fickell has always had a defensive mind at each of his stops.
“I would imagine, I don’t know the inner workings of their program, but (having Fickell on staff) kind of gives you a 10,000 foot view of getting a defense ready,” Wolverines tight end coach Steve Casula said Wednesday. “… I would imagine they’ve got a bevy of experience, of guys that have called defense and been head coaches, and I would imagine it’s a great resource for them.”
Then, for the next 14 years, Fickell worked his way up through the coaching ranks of his alma mater. Starting in 2002, Fickell was the special teams coach for two years then defensive line coach for a year before becoming the defensive coordinator until 2016. As a defensive coordinator, Fickell only lost to Michigan once in 2003, but won 13 times.
The only interruption in defensive coordinator duties was in 2011 when Fickell was promoted to interim coach job between the Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer administrations, the only two coaches he worked under. The Buckeyes infamously went 6-7 that year and lost to the Wolverines for just the second time this century until 2021.
After finding success as defensive coordinator, Fickell took his first head coaching job at Cincinnati from 2017 to 2021 where he went 4-8 in his first season. That year, Fickell and the Bearcats came up and visited Ann Arbor in former coach Jim Harbaugh’s third year where Michigan won a more lopsided affair than the scoreboard showed, 38-17. But in the next five seasons, Fickell and Cincinnati went 53-10 and made the College Football Playoffs in 2021.
After leading the Bearcats to new heights, Fickell took over for the Badgers in 2022. Now, Fickell is using the same defensive mind that he developed through many years with Ohio State and then Cincinnati to lead the No. 1 run defense in the country with the Badgers this season.
“It’s no surprise that a Luke Fickell-led team is going to play good defense,” Casula said. “… Their defensive staff is exceptional. We’ve coached against (Wisconsin defensive coordinator Mike Tressel) before, obviously during his time at Michigan State, (Wisconsin cornerbacks coach Paul Haynes) was there with him. So it’s clear that they’re aligned.”
As an assistant coach, Fickell is 13-1 against Michigan — but as a head coach and player, Fickell is 1-5. If history repeats itself — with Fickell serving as head coach for Wisconsin — Saturday’s game leans the Wolverines way.
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