Isn't the job of the AD to be out raising money for the school? The guy fired and had to buy out a coach that was winning games to bring in his friend to take the program to the next level and it has been an unqualified failure. How much money are they going to lose in ticket sales and people not donating by bringing Fickle back for another year? It ties together and if Fickle has a below .500 record next year they both. will be fired, Fickle for not getting the job done, and the AD for creating the mess.
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Their fundraising is bad, tons of money being put into facilities right now (just did a big south endzone project and currently building $285 mil football facility), football attendance/season tickets/revenue down because the team stinks, no mega donors to bankroll thinks, AD who doesn't fit in the current NIL landscape, expensive olympic sports programs (mens/womens hockey, rowing to name a couple).
Lots of reasons why they are way behind and cash strapped. At the end of the day, they spend a lot of years with great coaching and a system in football that allowed them to out perform based on their actual resources. They fell behind right away in NIL, the coach hasn't been good, they've had a brutal schedule the last two years (and it's tough next year too) and that program is spiraling.
Really they need to make an AD change. Barry Alvarez was not a good AD and he hand picked McIntosh (who played for him at Wisconsin) to be his successor. Was a stupid decision to let Barry have the reigns over that.
Unless the facilities are in brutal shape, I think the days of the massive/over-the-top facilities are done. All of that money is now going straight to NIL. Iowa State was smart to get all of those upgrades (football facility, practice facilities, end-zone, etc. done before NIL took off. Although Hilton could use some upgrades, those are likely on the back-burner.
Got to disagree Spartan. It's a combination. Money is a big issue, but McIntosh is a serious problem as well. I live around all these badger fans and that guy inspires ZERO confidence in the fan base here that things will get back on track. When your fans think your AD, football head coach, and entire athletic department are incompetent, it's pretty damn hard to fundraise and try to rectify a money issue.
As for the financial side. Skim this report that was put out just last week on the financial implications. Potentially losing $20mil in football profits annually (along with $200mil+ of economic impact for the state) would make things exponentially worse.
The Economic Impact of Badger Football’s Declining Performance
10.24.25. Badger Football has historically been a cornerstone of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Athletics Department, yielding about $60 million in annual profits. The 2025 season is on track to be the program’s worst this century, marked by shutout losses and failures against ranked...
crowe.wisc.edu
Barry was a great coach, but his meddling of the football program has drove it into the ground.
Yep and unfortunately if football is a sinking ship, the entire athletic department is going to sink with it.
I don't really give a rip about Wisconsin football aside from living in Madison but it's fun to go to Camp Randall when they're good. However, the impact it could have on some of the Olympic sports is what will really suck. Would love to see Wisconsin wrestling back and competitive, their volleyball and hockey programs have been great, etc. but those are all going to suffer which is a big bummer as a casual fan.
All of this is correct. But the biggest problem is they absolutely had no plan in place when a $20M line item came in to pay the players. They had budgets forecasted including the B10 media dollars increase and money allocated already (facility upgrades, Olympic sport expenditures, etc.) and were completely caught off guard now that they have a players expense.
That’s the real problem here. It’s not a problem that can be solved by just hitting donors up. And firing + hiring a coach exponentially adds to that problem. They just have to hope Fickell can turn it around.
McIntosh is at fault for the lack of planning and hiring/extending of Fickell that hasn’t worked out. But money is the reason they can’t fire Fickell. Not necessarily that McIntosh is “sticking with his guy”
On top of this, I believe other athletic departments are feeling this crunch too. I know ISU is, obviously, but we had an athletic director who was fiscally responsible enough to maintain 2 years of reserves to come up with a plan. We also cancelled our future facility upgrades. Wisconsin has not. They are probably too deep in to be able to.
I’m still shocked PSU was able to eat Franklin’s buyout in today’s day and age, but they had to have boosters who weren’t tapped. I’m not shocked the southern schools like LSU and Auburn are eating the contracts. The south is going to give a larger proportion of their income to football. Midwest and west coasters culturally aren’t likely to donate as much because a.) they don’t care as much or b.) are generally are just more frugal (speaking in broad strokes).
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I’m sure they will talk and agents will work behind the scenes. But if a school can’t hire a coach until after the season, will they be as apt to fire their coach during the season? I just don’t like how this works for the Memphis players that have worked hard and not had everything disrupted because another school isn’t patient. Even if this coach is going to finish the year, there’s no way that it won’t affect the team. Especially as players on that team will now start jockeying to see if they want a new home next year. Seems all of that should wait for the offseason.
I was going to bring this up as well. A lot of programs had absolutely no planning or foresight on the 20mil payout for players. This has shocked me as an excuse from many programs as people should have seen the writing on the wall.
I also do get that many schools AD’s basically spend or plan for future spending all the profit they make so when a new expenditure like that happens it often really hurts programs but I don’t believe their is anything in place that says they have to do it.
Yeah I totally get that, that’s why I said it was a money issue that they better be sure they have the math right for how low interest there will be next year. Not to mention the recruiting and perception damage.Got to disagree Spartan. It's a combination. Money is a big issue, but McIntosh is a serious problem as well. I live around all these badger fans and that guy inspires ZERO confidence in the fan base here that things will get back on track. When your fans think your AD, football head coach, and entire athletic department are incompetent, it's pretty damn hard to fundraise and try to rectify a money issue.
As for the financial side. Skim this report that was put out just last week on the financial implications. Potentially losing $20mil in football profits annually (along with $200mil+ of economic impact for the state) would make things exponentially worse.
The Economic Impact of Badger Football’s Declining Performance
10.24.25. Badger Football has historically been a cornerstone of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Athletics Department, yielding about $60 million in annual profits. The 2025 season is on track to be the program’s worst this century, marked by shutout losses and failures against ranked...
fun game created by the guys at solid verbal
https://www.solidverbal.com/carousel/
Basically you have to predict 4 openings that will come open in the power 4 and then predict the hires of those four plus the current job openings.
It was harder than I thought it would to predict the 4 openings.
https://www.solidverbal.com/carousel/
Basically you have to predict 4 openings that will come open in the power 4 and then predict the hires of those four plus the current job openings.
It was harder than I thought it would to predict the 4 openings.
Seems like a bad idea to let your former football coach become the AD. Has it ever worked?
Translation: they don’t have the money. Hoping he’ll settle
