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DT Luke Fickell (HC Wisconsin Badgers)

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Inside Luke Fickell's Ohio State playing days: ‘Luke didn’t start fights. He finished them'

Long before he was Wisconsin's coach, Fickell was a 50-game starter on Ohio State's D-line. These are the stories of Fickell, the player.
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"LUKE DIDN'T START FIGHTS. HE FINISHED THEM."​

Fickell arrived at Ohio State as a freshman in 1992 after earning Ohio lineman of the year honors at St. Francis DeSales High School in Columbus. He also compiled a 106-0 record on his way to three consecutive wrestling state championships, including two in the heavyweight division.
John Cooper (head coach, 1988-2000): They don’t get any tougher than Luke Fickell. I’m going to tell you right now.
Ryan Miller (linebacker, 1992-96): He probably to this day is the best high school wrestler in the state of Ohio.
Cooper: He went undefeated for three years in a row. Hell, he pinned just about everybody he wrestled.
Lorenzo Styles Sr. (linebacker, 1992-94): But when you get in a room full of alpha males, sometimes things get said and people want to react a certain way.
Ty Howard (defensive back, 1992-96): We were freshmen at Ohio State. I’m not going to say this D-lineman’s name that came in with us. But he was a trash talker, big guy, just ran his mouth. He wasn’t trying to bully Luke, per se. But he was one of those guys that would never back down. He just kept going, kept going at Luke.
Styles: Most fights in football turn into wrestling matches, and I don’t think you want to do that with a wrestler.
Howard: We all knew that Luke was an all-world wrestler. We just didn’t know how quickly Luke’s fuse would go before he would let loose on the guy. And the guy kept going and kept going. And then Luke finally just grabbed the guy by his chest and said, “Look, leave me alone. Let’s just play football.” The guy goes to remove Luke’s hand, and this guy was probably every bit of 275, 280. Luke tossed this guy like he was my size, and I’m a defensive back. It really opened up a lot of people’s eyes.
Winfield Garnett (defensive lineman, 1994-97): I saw a couple of guys underestimate Luke and they ended up with their feet in the air getting slammed.
Eddie George (running back, 1992-95): That’s one dude that you did not want to see in an alley or get in a fight with at practice because he would twist you in knots.
Matt Finkes (defensive lineman, 1993-96): Obviously in camp there’s always fights. Offensive and defensive linemen are always fighting. One time, somebody came down and down-blocked him and a scrum broke out. Luke just tossed him. Like, a five-point, freestyle, feet-above-the-head toss.
Miller: The two of us were on the scout team together while redshirting as freshmen. We’re just young Buckeyes trying to cut our teeth against the No. 1 offense. And Luke every other practice would be in a fight with some senior and he’d be hip-tossing them. And these guys didn’t know how to do that. It was kind of comical.
George: He was quiet, but he was an ass-kicker.
Howard: He’ll never punch first. But if you tick the guy off, it’s just bad news.
Garnett: Luke didn’t start fights. He finished them.
Howard: Even as a freshman, Luke was undersized, but, man, he was dominant.
Finkes: The guy played nose guard in the Big Ten at like 265 pounds. You don’t do that without being a tough son of a bitch.
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www.elevenwarriors.com

Skull Session: SEC Shorts Looks At How Michigan Cheats, Ohio State is a National Championship Contender and Luke Fickell Was “Quintessential Student-Athlete” for the Buckeyes

SEC Shorts makes fun of Michigan, Luke Fickell's college teammates reflect on his time in Columbus and HOMAGE makes a Dimitrious Stanley shirt.
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Wisconsin Football Fans Losing Faith in Luke Fickell After Blowout Loss to Alabama​

Has Luke Fickell already lost the trust of the Badgers fanbase?

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When Luke Fickell was hired as the next head coach for the Wisconsin Badgers football team, it felt like a seismic shift.

Fans were buzzing with excitement, hoping Fickell’s arrival could help take the program to the next level and get them over the proverbial hump. But after just three games into his second season, that optimism has all but evaporated, and it’s becoming clear that Wisconsin is further away from being a legitimate contender than anyone could have expected.

Saturday’s embarrassing 42-10 defeat at the hands of Kaelen DeBoer and No. 4 Alabama was a wake-up call. The Badgers’ most lopsided home defeat in 16 years was a humbling reminder of the gap that still exists between Wisconsin and the elite college football teams they're chasing.

Fickell’s spirited postgame statement to the media said it all: “If you haven’t had your a-- whooped before, you just did. And it hurts. And it’s not easy. But in this game, that’s going to happen. It’s a part of the game. It stinks. It doesn’t mean you didn’t work hard. It doesn’t mean you didn’t prepare. It means you didn’t get the job done.”

But here’s the problem—it wasn’t supposed to happen like this, not with the buildup surrounding Fickell’s hire. Most Wisconsin fans understood that 2024 didn’t need to be a finished product yet. But when you consider the top 25 transfer class and the high school recruiting haul this staff brought in, they expected to see noticeable improvement from Year 1, if for no other reason than a better understanding of the systems and a little cohesion.

Instead, this team needs help in seemingly every facet and also doesn't have a strength you can point to on either side of the ball. Fickell himself admitted as much, saying, “We know we’ve got a hell of a long way to go to figure out what we are and what we can hang our hat on.”
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The fanbase’s patience is running thin, and unless Fickell can turn things around quickly or at least show marked improvement, the goodwill he had upon his arrival will disappear just as fast as it arrived.
 
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It’s been pretty disappointing to see Fickell’s results at Wisconsin. I thought he would really have them in competition for the Big Ten. Feels like he was never a competitive recruiter - very quiet and almost too quiet for the social media/digital age we live in.

It will be interesting to see how things go after this weekend. Luckily for Fick, OSU is playing slow-tempo and in an offensive tooling phase, so the scoreboard shouldn’t be the bloodbath that it certainly could be.


 
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pnuts34 said:
Not a good look Luke. Might as well make him an analyst at OSU and/or co-DL coach. UC ain't taking him back, and another HC position is going to need a few years to rebrand himself first.
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I love the idea of bringing him back on staff, we’ve seen what results happen when you bring back OSU alums that are talented coaches.

He could get some great mentorship from Day and Patricia if he came back as Larry’s heir apparent. My only concern would be his next steps and expectations, and where that leaves us 3-5 years from now at the DC & DL coaching position.
 
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SEREbuckeye said:
I love the idea of bringing him back on staff, we’ve seen what results happen when you bring back OSU alums that are talented coaches.

He could get some great mentorship from Day and Patricia if he came back as Larry’s heir apparent. My only concern would be his next steps and expectations, and where that leaves us 3-5 years from now at the DC & DL coaching position.
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Osu can do worse than Fickell as the DC(though id like to keep Patricia as long as possible) or DL coach.
 
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I think it's unfair when people criticize him and say the fatal flaw in his approach was trying to modernize Wisconsin's offense. I imagine the plan was we'll get our usual lineman and running backs and then modernize the passing game with better schemes and better players. A reasonable plan. There's no law against being good at running and throwing. Wisconsin had been trying to beat people 17-13 forever---that's a pretty hard thing to do in 2025. I mean, do people think he was recruiting 240 pound lineman?
 
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