Sports

20 years later, Wisconsin football is reliving Nebraska’s missteps

20 years later, Wisconsin football is reliving Nebraska's missteps

LINCOLN — Barry Alvarez sat at a Ruth’s Chris Steak House table, the walls around him adorned with Wisconsin football glory he helped create.
The former Badger coach and athletic director, who played on some of Bob Devaney’s early teams and counts Frank Solich as a close friend, was asked on his weekly ESPN Madison radio show — from the steakhouse — what he thought of UW fans chanting for coach Luke Fickell to be fired at halftime of an ugly loss to Maryland.
Alvarez has a statue outside Camp Randall Stadium. He can say what he wants. And did.
“I think it’s terrible.” Alvarez said. “Despicable. They’re spoiled rotten. Here’s a team that you’ve got young players trying to come on, they’re competing, they’re going to have a chance to get better, and you flip on ‘em.”
Later, Alvarez said, if he were sitting next to a booing fan, he tell them to “get your ass outta here.”
“Go boo in a bar!” Alvarez said.
Wisconsin heads to Michigan this week as a 17 1/2-point underdog. Later, UW plays Ohio State, Oregon, Indiana and Illinois. The chance of Fickell surviving this season as the Badgers’ head coach seem about as slim as Bill Callahan surviving in 2007. Which, he didn’t.
It’s an out-of-body experience to watch Wisconsin, the Lucy to Nebraska’s Charlie Brown for a decade, manage to make the same mistakes — in the same ways — that NU once did. Maybe it’s slightly comforting, to Husker fans, to see they’re not alone. Maybe they can suggest a good cocktail to drown the sorrows. Or how to laugh — because failure this abject can be funny — so they may not cry.
We’ve mentioned the similarities offhand several times. But here’s the full deep dive on the parallels:
The subtle decline, coupled with administrative neglect
Paul Chryst’s first five seasons, through 2019, mirrored Frank Solich’s first four years — Wisconsin won 76% of its games and played in three Big Ten title games.
But the Badgers didn’t drastically upgrade their recruiting in the week of that success, nor did Alvarez, then the athletic director, get top-of-the-line facilities built in a timely fashion the way rivals Iowa and Minnesota did. Anyone who’s ever covered in Camp Randall Stadium knows that battleship is … Worse for wear.
Only in 2026 will Wisconsin fully open its renovated athletic facility.
Sound familiar? Solich won 82% of his games, 1998 through 2001, but his recruiting never quite matched the on-field success. Meanwhile Bill Byrne left after the 2002 season, and left it to Pederson to build the Hawks indoor facility and the North Stadium complex.
New A.D. whose hiring had broad support — before he quickly fired a coach
Pederson started his career at NU in the back offices before embarking on an administrative career that took him to Pittsburgh.
When Byrne left for Texas A&M, he recommended to chancellor Harvey Perlman that the Huskers hire Pederson. So did Osborne, Perlman said. So did the media. So did the industry.
“Everyone we talked to said, ‘We might be interested. But your person is Steve Pederson,'” Perlman said at the time of Pederson’s hiring.
Said Pederson: “I don’t want to take a ‘Ready! Fire! Aim!’ approach at Nebraska.”
Eleven months later, Solich was out after a 9-3 regular season record.
McIntosh is a former Badger football player who also served as a longtime deputy to Alvarez. He took over in summer 2021, before a 9-4 season. Fourteen months later, he’d fired Chryst.
The breaking point loss
For Solich, that was a 38-9 defeat to Kansas State that probably wasn’t as close as the score indicated.
It was the second straight year Nebraska got run off the field by the Wildcats, and it was Solich’s fourth loss in six years to Bill Snyder.
McIntosh pulled the plug on Chryst after a 34-10 loss to Illinois and Bret Bielema, who left Wisconsin for Arkansas after the 2012 Big Ten championship game.
The popular interim head coaches Pederson and McIntosh didn’t choose
At Wisconsin, that was Jim Leonhard, a former Badger who led UW to a 4-3 record after Chryst got fired. After Wisconsin (luckily) beat Nebraska 15-14, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Leonhard would eventually get the job.
Then UW lost to rival Minnesota. One day later, Wisconsin hired Luke Fickell.
At Nebraska, that was Bo Pelini, who won the Alamo Bowl over Michigan State. Well, Pelini wasn’t getting the job from Pederson then and just about everybody knew it.
Pederson had someone — Perlman told The Athletic in 2022 it was Mike Sherman, at the time the Green Bay Packers head coach — in mind. He couldn’t land him and went through a tortuous 40-day search before landing on Callahan. Who, it should be noted, did better at NU than Sherman would in his four years at Texas A&M.
Nevertheless…
A new coach junked the program’s DNA and didn’t win press conferences
In NU’s case, Pederson’s list of coaches pointed to a desire — for whatever reason — to shift hard toward a pro-style offense. Callahan and his big brain installed the West Coast system, which had it moments in Lincoln, but took a PhD to run correctly.
Fickell took the job and hired Air Raid practitioner Phil Longo to revamp the pass attack. Wisconsin went from a run-focused program to a balanced shotgun pass team that, had it kept any of its starting quarterbacks healthy, might have been better. Didn’t happen.
In pressers, Callahan’s idiosyncratic, Chicago-bathed syntax inspired Jim Halpert-level furrowed brows and rampant mimicry — “you could see his development ooze all over the field,” he once said of Joe Ganz, while Fickell can’t hide his angst, quell his pedantic tendencies or just stop talking.
Behold this word salad.
“I’ve said it a million times, your culture, your identity, it’s not what you put on the walls,” Fickell said after Wisconsin’s loss to Maryland. “You can walk in a team room, and there’s things listed on the walls. Uou can walk into coach’s rooms, you can see the ‘play hard’ board, and just because you put those things up doesn’t mean that’s who you are.
“We’ve got to do a much, much better job of making and finding a way to transition the way we train, the things we preach, the things we know are important in that locker room for them to be able to show on the field, to really get a good feel and to show people what we want our identity to be.”
Moving stuff.
It’s hard to see, with Wisconsin’s schedule, anything better than 5-7.
Would McIntosh fire his guy? Would UW allow McIntosh to hire a successor?
Nebraska fired Pederson, hired Tom Osborne to replace him, then hired Pelini. Could a McIntosh firing, Alvarez hiring and Leonhard return be in the works?
Osborne was 70 when he took the A.D. job in 2007. Alvarez is 78 — still sharp as a tack of course.
Is Leonhard, now with the Denver Broncos, the answer? What about Kansas coach Lance Leipold, who grew up in Jefferson, Wisconsin and coached at Wisconsin-Whitewater? Or Leipold’s former offensive coordinator, Andy Kotelnicki, who’s now at Penn State? Or former Badger quarterback and well-traveled offensive mind Darrell Bevell?
These guys were all options last time. McIntosh hired Fickell.
On paper, it was a better process — and hire — than Pederson’s selection of Callahan. In practice, it hasn’t been.
The rest of Wisconsin’s journey fits Nebraska’s pain, and ludicrous touchpoints, to an unusual degree.
This summer, searching for inspiration, Fickell invited former NFL coach Jon Gruden to campus for a rollicking speech. Callahan, of course, worked for Gruden at the Oakland Raiders before succeeding him as head coach and later losing to him in the Super Bowl.
Gruden’s mantra is “pound the rock,” which, Fickell will tell you, is a metaphor for belief.
“If you continue to pound the rock and pound the rock and pound the rock with everybody, there’s going to be some cracks and eventually you’re going to be able to feel and see it,” Fickell said. “That’s kind of where we are and where I am, too.”
Fickell kept talking, but we’ll fade him out to note that, in the Callahan days, Nebraska had a literal rock, boulder-sized, under the North Stadium bleachers, a small metal plaque with the words “Pound The Rock” affixed to it.
Sometime after Callahan’s firing, the rock was removed, and taken to, at this point, parts unknown.
Wisconsin’s coach has a point. Words are fleeting.
My pick: Michigan 31, Wisconsin 10
Nebraska vs. Michigan State
Time: 3 p.m.
TV: FS1
Line: Nebraska by 11 1/2
Sam’s take: This line has swung hard toward the Huskers since it opened at eight points. Styles makes fights, and MSU’s lack of elite pass rush and lack of explosive run plays means Nebraska’s biggest weaknesses won’t be tested. NU’s strengths throwing the ball and defending the pass are considerable.
Pick: Nebraska 35, Michigan State 20
Illinois at Purdue
Time: 11 a.m.
TV: BTN
Line: Illinois by 9 1/2
Sam’s take: The Boilermakers got to sit for a week, heal up and watch Illinois’ run game get untracked against USC. If Purdue can find a way to slow the Illini on the ground — big if there — this could be a replay of last year’s overtime battle. The talent disparity here isn’t that great.
Pick: Illinois 28, Purdue 21
Ohio State vs. Minnesota
Time: 6:30 p.m.
TV: NBC
Line: Ohio State by 23 1/2
Sam’s take: Kind of a “get through” game for the Gophers, who have to protect their quarterback, Drake Lindsey, from OSU’s dominant pass rush. The Buckeyes’ offensive front should wear down Minnesota’s defense over four quarters.
Pick: Ohio State 31, Minnesota 7
Penn State at UCLA
Time: 2:30 p.m.
TV: CBS
Line: Penn State by 26 1/2
Sam’s take: The Bruins’ defense looked better — not great, but better — against Northwestern and may well keep the home team — in its fairly empty stadium — in it for a half. And only a half, as the Nittany Lions play a “get right” game after a disappointing loss to Oregon.
Pick: Penn State 37, UCLA 16
Maryland vs. Washington
Time: 2:30 p.m.
TV: BTN
Line: Washington by 6 1/2
Sam’s take: The Huskies lost by 18 to Ohio State, but should take some positive lessons away about their competitiveness for the balance of the game. UW sophomore quarterback Demond Williams is a year ahead of Maryland freshman Malik Washington, and that should make a difference. Worth a second screen while Husker fans watch the MSU game.
Pick: Washington 24, Maryland 17
Northwestern vs. Louisiana-Monroe
Time: 2:30 p.m.
TV: BTN
Line: Northwestern by 10 1/2
Sam’s take: The Warhawks took that 73-0 spanking at Alabama and rebounded with wins over UTEP and Arkansas State. Northwestern’s struggles in nonconference games are well-documented — losses to Southern Illinois, Miami (Ohio), Akron and Illinois State in the last decade — but the Wildcats should survive by the lake.
Pick: Northwestern 25, Louisiana-Monroe 14
Sam’s record
Last week straight up: 4-2 | Last week against the spread: 4-2
This season SU: 57-8 | This season ATS: 28-26
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Sam McKewon
Sports Editor
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