Boos rained down at Camp Randall Stadium on a Saturday back in September as Wisconsin Badger football players jogged to the locker room at halftime, trailing 20-0 to the Maryland Terrapins in what would
become the second loss in a losing streak that has now stretched to six games with no end in sight.
It was an “embarrassing” scene, according to Barry Alvarez, the man who invented Wisconsin football.
Just not for the reasons you might think.
“They’re spoiled rotten,” the former head football coach and athletic director said of the boo birds during a segment on ESPN Madison.
“How do you think that makes the players feel? That’s disrespectful. It’s not loyal. You’re not a fan,” Alvarez continued. “If the person sitting next to me is booing, [I’m telling them]: Get your ass out of here. We don’t need you in here. You don’t want to watch this? Go someplace else. Go boo in a bar. That really upsets me.”
The boos were accompanied by a “Fire Fickell” chant directed at head coach Luke Fickell. Heralded as a home run hire three years ago, Fickell has become persona non grata in Madison as the program has experienced its most precipitous decline since Alvarez rescued it from irrelevancy in the 90s.
Not only did Fickell see the program’s 22-year bowl streak end in his second season, but it appears all but certain Wisconsin will finish below .500 in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1991-92. The Badgers are 0-5 in Big Ten play this season and have averaged 5.2 points per game in six straight losses.
Fickell’s predecessor Paul Chryst — who held a .720 winning percentage in eight seasons, won the Big Ten West three times, and finished in the Top 25 four times — was fired precisely because of the standard Alvarez set.
“The expectations of our program at Wisconsin are to win championships,” Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh said at the time in his press conference announcing Chryst’s departure.
A similar sentiment was expressed at Nebraska when the Huskers parted ways with head coach Bo Pelini in 2014, setting the stage for a miserable eight-year stretch in which the program failed to make a bowl game.
Penn State axed head coach James Franklin earlier this season after a stunning three-week stretch in which the program lost three straight games and went from a College Football Playoff contender to unranked, a decision made all the more eyebrow-raising when you consider the Nittany Lions were a play away from an appearance in the national championship game a year ago with Franklin at the helm.
Seven other Power 4 programs have fired their head coach this season, including LSU, Florida, Auburn, Oklahoma State, Virginia Tech, Arkansas, and UCLA, and more firings could be on the way as programs like Wisconsin, Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina, Michigan State, and Maryland weigh their options.
Even second-year Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer was briefly on the hot seat after a season-opening loss to Florida State that prompted at least one die-hard Crimson Tide fan to declare that, if she were to win the lottery, she would use the winnings to pay DeBoer’s $70 million buyout.
Until a torrid run through the College Football Playoff last season, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day’s days in Columbus seemed numbered after four straight losses to hated rival Michigan. Bear in mind, Day’s overall record at the end of the regular season was 66-10, in addition to a 46-5 mark in Big Ten play.
Which leads me to the question: Is any college football fan base truly happy?
Perhaps the happiest fans in college football right now are in Bloomington, Indiana, where the Hoosiers have become national title contenders seemingly overnight thanks to an unprecedented turnaround by head coach Curt Cignetti. Their success has sent shock waves across the college football landscape, lighting a fire under fans who feel compelled to ask, “If it can happen at Indiana, why can’t it happen here?”
Are these fans spoiled? Entitled? Or simply desperate for a taste of success they’ve only ever dreamed of?
I’ve seen a lot of back and forth between Gopher fans over the state of the program under head coach P.J. Fleck, who — if you can believe it — is now the Big Ten’s second-longest tenured head coach, and with Saturday’s 23-20 overtime win over Michigan State tied Glen Mason for the fourth most wins in program history.
What is the program’s ceiling? What is the program’s ceiling under Fleck? Are they the same? These are the questions I see debated week after week, especially after a loss. And they are the same kind of questions that lead athletic directors to fire their head football coach — for better or for worse.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I can appreciate that Fleck is one of the winningest coaches in program history, but I can also understand the desire to see the program reach heights that seem so close yet so far away. Fans of Big Ten programs like Purdue, Rutgers, Maryland, and UCLA would happily trade for Minnesota’s current run of success under Fleck, but I also know Gopher fans look with envious eyes at the recent and sustained success of programs like Wisconsin (pre-Fickell), Iowa, and now Indiana.
One of Fleck’s favorite lines is, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Right now that seems to be the driving force of college football — seeing the greater success of others and wanting it for yourself, sooner rather than later.
But in a sport where only one of 134 teams is crowned a champion, where does it end?
