There are stretches in college football when a head coach has to do more than explain a season to his athletic department. He has to convince people investing in the team that there’s something worth building toward on the other side. Wisconsin football just lived through that reality, stumbling to a 4–8 finish that raised every question a program can face at once, and Luke Fickell found himself doing something no coach enjoys: selling the future before the present has made much of a case for itself.
That task gets even harder when your offense spends most of the season looking like it’s running uphill in cement.