Cincinnati’s Luke Fickell Hired By Wisconsin to Replace Paul Chryst as Football HC

The Wisconsin Badgers have a new head football coach.

It's not a big surprise that the news comes as a surprise. The former Cincinnati head coach had been targeted by the Badgers to take over as head coach, according to an earlier report.

Jim Leonhard was put in charge of the defense on an interim basis after the firing of Paul Chryst.

Fickell's ability to build a program is one of the reasons he is attractive to the Badgers' brass.

Last year's 13-1 team that reached the College Football Playoff is one of the reasons why Fickell has had great success at the University of Cincinnati. Nine of his players from that team were selected in the NBA draft.

Fickell was the interim head coach at Ohio State in 2011. He was a member of the Ohio State coaching staff from 2002 to 2016 and worked as the co-defensive coordinators and linebackers coach from 2005 to 2012

In parts of eight seasons, Wisconsin went 67-26 and has gone 4-3 this year with a new head coach. Potrykus reported this week that the Badgers were going to hire him as their full-time head coach.

A source told Potrykus that they wanted to move as quickly as possible.

According to the report, Dave Aranda and Lance Leipold were evaluated by the school as possible replacements. The possible appointment of the full-time coach this week was addressed by Leonhard.

He told reporters that he doesn't want to get into much of that at the moment. The group of players is what this week is about. I don't want our attention to be focused on us. Hopefully this week will lead to the direction I want it to go

In the end, Wisconsin was able to get its man.