PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. — New Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell will continue to be a presence around the Badgers during Tuesday night’s Guaranteed Rate Bowl at Chase Field in downtown Phoenix, but not as the man in charge, he said Monday.
Fickell plans to be on the sideline, wearing a headset and coaching where he can help, but he’ll continue to let interim head coach Jim Leonhard handle his duties against Oklahoma State.
“I’m coaching in a way that’s letting, really, these guys kind of handle things the way that they’ve handled them,” Fickell said during the Badgers’ media day. “And they’ve been great. They’ve been really mature about it. Jim’s been awesome.
“I’m kind of a guy that just, you know, maybe a little bit more of a figurehead and we’ll communicate with those guys in situational stuff, but we have changed nothing — the way we practice, the way they go about a Tuesday practice, a Wednesday practice, a Thursday practice, a Friday practice, how they’re gonna do game day.”
Fickell said his communication during the game Tuesday night will be “much different” than it normally would be during a game. He’ll help relay Leonhard’s plan to the team while trying to keep “everything as similar as possible.”
“I think that’s the only chance that gives you to be successful,” Fickell said.
Fickell, who was hired away from Cincinnati on Nov. 27, made a strategic decision to not take the reins away from Leonhard when he came on board, but he wanted to find a way to be around his new team.
It was a balance he had to discover.
“I didn’t wanna be that guy that was on the Zoom call while the game was going on, and while the guys in your program and team are sweating and working their butts off and things like that,” Fickell said. “And, really, just with the new age of what college football is right now, and how can you really take care of your program and your team and your guys if you’re not around them? … I mean, if you are not talking to them in this day and age, somebody else is, and I don’t think there’s any way to keep what you’re doing intact unless you’re constantly around them and communicating with them.”
Fickell has been deferring to the current staff to handle basically everything. He said he’s been asked who the starting quarterback will be Tuesday night but refuses to answer.
“How arrogant would you have to be to walk in in three weeks and think you know better about what’s going on within the program, what these guys have done over, whether it’s a five-year period with Chase Wolf or even a year period with Myles [Burkett], to make that decision,” he said.
Fickell has been at the bowl practices, a whistle in tow, senior safety John Torchio said, but has been in more of an administrative role than any sort of coaching job.
Having him on the sideline Tuesday will be “different, obviously,” Torchio said.
“It’s our third head coach of the year,” he said. “I don’t know how many times that’s happened in college football.
“You just gotta roll with it. That’s just how the season has been so far.”
Fickell’s future players have enjoyed having him around to get to know Fickell, the person, and Fickell, the coach.
“It’s cool just to kind of have him around,” sophomore running back Braelon Allen said. “Just for him to be here with us and just kind of build a relationship with him, kind of see what his coaching style is like, although he hasn’t really been with the running backs or the offense too much, just kind of being more of a defensive guy.
“But just having him around, being able to build a relationship and a connection, it’s been cool. I’m excited for him to take over everything and make it his show.”
Being at practice but not truly coaching hasn’t been easy, Fickell said.
He has taken a lot of notes during the past few weeks but added that watching how another coach handles his team could be helpful.
“Every practice has been pretty hard,” he said with a laugh. “It’s been hard during practice to just, kind of, bite your lip a little bit and just keep moving around and, then it’s difficult, too, because you don’t [know the] lingo. I know the defense, but I don’t know the defense. So, it’s challenging in those ways because you don’t want to spend too much time studying and learning it all because obviously some things are going to change here in a couple weeks.
“So, all those things together, it’s been uncomfortable.”