USA TODAY: Wisconsin's Luke Fickell among 'most overpaid coaches in college football'

Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell was included in USA TODAY’s Paul Myerberg’s recent list of the ‘Five most overpaid college football coaches’ on Wednesday.

Fickell, who has led the Badgers to a 12-8 overall mark since taking over in Nov. 2022, was listed alongside Florida’s Billy Napier, Auburn’s Hugh Freeze, Florida State’s Mike Norvell and UAB’s Trent Dilfer. While no ranking was assigned to each coach, Napier was listed first, followed by Freeze second, Fickell third, Norvell fourth and Dilfer at fifth.

For context, Fickell is set to reel in roughly $8 million in his second full season as head coach at UW. Only the Seminoles’ Norvell, who holds a 1-5 record with Florida State to start the 2024 season, makes more on the five-person list.

Myerberg included a brief thought explaining each coach’s inclusion. Here is what he wrote about Fickell:

“Like Napier and Freeze, Fickell was able to translate a ton of success at a lesser program – he went 57-18 at Cincinnati and coached the first Group of Five team to make the playoff – into a huge deal at Wisconsin worth $7.725 million in compensation this season. But the Badgers have been mediocre or worse since he took over in late 2022, barely sneaking into a bowl last year and potentially missing the postseason in 2024. These struggles can be attributed to a strange shift in offensive philosophy from the meat-and-potatoes style that Wisconsin used to great impact for decades.”

Myerberg isn’t wrong. While Wisconsin’s offense appears to have discovered a rhythm over its previous two wins over Purdue and Rutgers, Fickell was hired with exceptions of elevating this group into playoff territory.

Excluding the 2020 COVID season, Wisconsin had secured at least eight victories per season from 2009-2021. As of Oct. 16, the Badgers are projected to secure seven wins for the second straight season, a relative disappointment for a program investing that type of money in a coach with immense success at a Group of Five organization in the past.

Through six games, Wisconsin is projected to land in the Bad Boy Mowers’ Pinstripe Bowl in late December. A strong winning streak to close the season should warrant Fickell’s exclusion from any future iterations of this list.

The Badgers are back in action on Saturday against the 3-3 Northwestern Wildcats.