Yet

We’re not there yet. I think that was abundantly clear midway through the 1st quarter. The place we all want this football program to be? We’re not there yet. 

And “yet” is doing a lot of the work there. We’re not there yet. I want to talk about “yet.”

Say I was a Wisconsin blogger (gross). And say Luke Fickell was in year four, Wisconsin goes on the road at #1 as the #20 team in the country, and they find themselves down 35-3 at the half to Oregon. At that point I might write “we’re just not there.” And then I’d go into a deep discussion about how Fickell might not be the guy. 

Remember, Fickell was handed a program in late 2022 that had 22 consecutive winning seasons. Paul Chryst was fired despite eight consecutive winning seasons, four of them with double digit wins. Fickell’s job is to advance their program to the level where they’re consistently competing for playoffs appearances. Chryst was fired because he couldn’t get them there. 

So yes, if this was Wisconsin, there’s no “yet” in my statement. By year four at Wisconsin, Fickell better not have a half of football like that. Not with the program he was handed. His job is to get the Wisconsin roster to a place where they’d never look outmatched like we looked outmatched today. 

Bret Bielema, obviously, is in a different situation. If we use 1995 as our benchmark here (the season where Illinois football fell apart), Illinois has six winning seasons the last 29 years and Wisconsin has 27 winning seasons the last 29 years. One more time in case you missed that: Wisconsin, 27 winning seasons; Illinois, 6 winning seasons. I think sometimes people forget just how bad we were.