Wisconsin Football 2025

[homer]

The money has gotten so grotesque in college sports. I know this is "old man shakes fist at cloud" stuff, but the dude who donated $290 million to MSU athletics is a moron. The guy could build 10 rural medical clinics and staff them for 10 years with that money. Harumph.

[Jim French Stepstool]

2 hours ago, homer said:

The money has gotten so grotesque in college sports. I know this is "old man shakes fist at cloud" stuff, but the dude who donated $290 million to MSU athletics is a moron. The guy could build 10 rural medical clinics and staff them for 10 years with that money. Harumph.

You're right of course. What really brought it home for me was the BB tournament in LV earlier this season. The schools were basically playing for NIL (Never Inhibit Lawlessness) money, which was bad enough. But it was also tied into some sort of point differential system. So in the last minutes of one game one of the teams (I don't remember who) was rushing down the court, looking to score as many points as they could----and they had a huge lead. This was going on in a COLLEGE basketball game. Made me want to puke.

 

[igor67]

I imagine more people will keep things turned off as this continues. I know it makes it easy for me to stay disengaged.

[nate82]

Rumor is that the top 4 QB’s in the transfer portal will get $4mm+.  I think we can exclude UW as a landing spot for any of the top 5.  Probably just best to stick with what UW has already and hope for the best.

Leavitt’s starting point is rumored to be $4mm and could go as high as $6mm.  Raiola and Sorsby are reportedly also in the same range.  

[JosephC]

TE-Tucker Ashcraft in the portal.  The Badgers still have Grant Stec and a total of 6 scholarship tight ends on the roster, so this one doesn't seem to hurt as much as other recent losses.

Pretty obvious at this point that a lot of current players see the Fickell-led Badgers as a sinking ship and want to get the heck outta here.  Ashcraft getting big offers from other schools?  Really?  And Stec/Ashcraft, Ashcraft/Stec appeared to be far and away TE1a and TE1b, there will be more than enough playing for two, so I can't see Ashcraft needing to leave because he wasn't going to get on the field.

And while a lot of names have been floating around the rumor mill, I think we have out first real credible report of a player that may end up at Wisconsin.  Alabama-Birmingham WR-Iverson Hooks.  5-10, 175 that plays out of the slot and has the speed to impact the deep middle of the field.  Did almost nothing his first three years, and then had 87 catches, 1065 yards, 10 touchdown season in 2025.  247sports does not have an updated grade on him yet, so no idea how the experts think he stacks up with the rest of the transfer WR group.

 

[JosephC]

On 12/27/2025 at 9:56 AM, homer said:

The money has gotten so grotesque in college sports. I know this is "old man shakes fist at cloud" stuff, but the dude who donated $290 million to MSU athletics is a moron. The guy could build 10 rural medical clinics and staff them for 10 years with that money. Harumph.

Just catching up with the pros.  Think of all the taxpayer money they have swindled from the public with the aid of half-idiot/half-corrupt politicians for decades now.  As we've seen first-hand here in Wisconsin, those big buildings don't raise even close to enough tax revenue to "pay for themselves."  What is the sales tax for the people in Milwaukee county again?  I remember Scooter and Terrible Tom hand-in-hand telling us what a great deal this was and how the deer district was going to fix all financial woes, cure cancer and solve world hunger.

I think the 1+ billion dollars that Wisconsin has thrown into Miller Park could have been spent better elsewhere.  Like, just about anything since MLB can pay single employees 70 million dollars a year.

But back to your point, I completely agree that anyone who throws 290 million into an athletic department is a moron.  But at the same time, is anybody who supports the Brewers/Bucks/Packers getting a whole bunch of free public money any less a moron?  

[homer]

53 minutes ago, JosephC said:

Just catching up with the pros.  Think of all the taxpayer money they have swindled from the public with the aid of half-idiot/half-corrupt politicians for decades now.  As we've seen first-hand here in Wisconsin, those big buildings don't raise even close to enough tax revenue to "pay for themselves."  What is the sales tax for the people in Milwaukee county again?  I remember Scooter and Terrible Tom hand-in-hand telling us what a great deal this was and how the deer district was going to fix all financial woes, cure cancer and solve world hunger.

I think the 1+ billion dollars that Wisconsin has thrown into Miller Park could have been spent better elsewhere.  Like, just about anything since MLB can pay single employees 70 million dollars a year.

But back to your point, I completely agree that anyone who throws 290 million into an athletic department is a moron.  But at the same time, is anybody who supports the Brewers/Bucks/Packers getting a whole bunch of free public money any less a moron?  

You are preaching to the choir. The core issue is that many fans' identities are tied to the teams they root for. If the Brewers or Bucks were to move, the first people they would blame would be the politicians. 

[LouisEly]

1 hour ago, JosephC said:

Pretty obvious at this point that a lot of current players see the Fickell-led Badgers as a sinking ship and want to get the heck outta here. 

Half of the volleyball team that went to the Final Four who could have returned went into the portal. Playing time was up for grabs there.  The basketball team has been bringing in 1/3rd of the team in transfers each year.  The football team lost a top recruit to a team that went 4-8 last year.

Whatever it is is bigger than the football team head coach.  And I don't think that it is any one specific thing.

 

[JosephC]

Running back coach Devon Spalding is leaving Wisconsin and heading to Michigan State to coach under Pat Fitzgerald.

[JosephC]

QB-Billy Edwards, expected to get a medical redshirt for this past year, is now in the portal.

[Fear The Chorizo]

On 12/28/2025 at 1:10 PM, homer said:

You are preaching to the choir. The core issue is that many fans' identities are tied to the teams they root for. If the Brewers or Bucks were to move, the first people they would blame would be the politicians. 

I think that's largely because people see so many examples of their taxes getting spent on things they either never benefit from, are politically/morally aligned against, or its flat-out stolen....so not also putting public money towards professional sports just frustrates them even if it's not the ideal way to use those funds.  

 

Quite honestly, if the worst thing a politician would do is not advocate using taxpayer $$ to help a team build a new playground stadium complex and see them leave the state, they'd get my vote regardless of their party.  I'm probably too jaded currently living in MN, though...

[JosephC]

Kind of disappointed by the group of offensive linemen in the portal, although that number will really expand on Friday.  Probably the most interesting one I've seen so far is North Texas OL-Braydon Nelson.  6-4, 321.  Played RG and LT as a true freshman in 2024, and then started 13 games in 2025 (11 at LT, 2 at RT).  Second team all conference this last season.  Some footage on YouTube of him against real low level competition, and what I saw didn't exactly blow me away.  Strength-wise, he just doesn't seem to be there yet.  But he does look to have some pretty quick feet for a big guy, and may fit into Mateos zone-blocking scheme, even though he doesn't necessarily look like he is built for the part.  He might have a big jump in him after getting into a Big 10 strength program.  At least he's an interesting, experienced guy that could fit in the Badgers price-range.

[Samurai Bucky]

I might have said this at some point in this thread (29 pages... and growing), but I find it very, very funny that many people who are having issues with NIL were adamant about college players getting paid.  What did we think was going to happen?

Yeah, athletes put in "extra time" to benefit the university.  The university gets all of the profits and what do the athletes get?  Pfft... just free education, free tutoring, training table, clothes, and a lot more.  The student who works extra hours to get a good grade or actually helps get research grants (university gets "all the profits") doesn't get a free education, free tutoring, training, etc.

All I know is kids don't go to a school to participate in a sport and have pride in the school.  In the past, Wisconsin kids don't come to Wisconsin -- they go to Indiana because they get paid more and, well, their program is much much better.  I'm just bitter.

[nate82]

38 minutes ago, Samurai Bucky said:

Yeah, athletes put in "extra time" to benefit the university.  The university gets all of the profits and what do the athletes get?  Pfft... just free education, free tutoring, training table, clothes, and a lot more.  The student who works extra hours to get a good grade or actually helps get research grants (university gets "all the profits") doesn't get a free education, free tutoring, training, etc.

I am and still am for NIL money going to the players.  It was ridiculous for the NCAA to restrict this.  Just because they play for a school and get a scholarship doesn’t mean they can’t make money off of their skill sets.  It would be like telling those students they can’t get a job that pays them in their field until they graduate.

Slavery in the US has been abolished for quite sometime now.  College athletes were being treated as slaves for their schools.  I am fine with schools not paying the players but the players should be able to get paid however they see as appropriate.  If it is from a booster fine if it is from a local business also fine.  If it is from a corporation also fine.  The NCAA like usual botched it and fumbled with actually doing things that would help the sports and athletes.  The NCAA is just looking out for itself and how much money it can bring in.  

[owbc]

The next step is clearly to decouple the athletics departments from the rest of the university. Money should not flow between the sports and academic sides of the university. Money probably shouldn't even flow from football to other sports except to cover shared expenses. 

As was previously mentioned here, my hope is that college football eventually splits from the NCAA and becomes its own league that competes with the NFL. Ideally the rest of the collegiate sports remain in the NCAA and go back to the traditional geographically-based conference alignment. But I wonder if that's even possible given NIL money is going to pretty much every sport these days. 

[LouisEly]

5 hours ago, JosephC said:

Kind of disappointed by the group of offensive linemen in the portal, although that number will really expand on Friday. 

I wonder if the elimination of the spring portal window has some kids thinking twice about going in.  Previously they had more leverage in that if they didn't like what was offered in the winter, they had another shot in the spring (it's football - players will get injured in the spring).  Now they don't.  And with schools officially having revenue sharing now, they may already have deals in place with their current school and not want to take the risk of shopping around.

Also, if a school is still in the playoffs (8 teams still alive), they get five days after their team is eliminated to enter the portal.  I don't think that was the case previously, as they had to decide by the time the portal opened (Pribula from Penn State last year for example).

[JosephC]

22 hours ago, Samurai Bucky said:

I might have said this at some point in this thread (29 pages... and growing), but I find it very, very funny that many people who are having issues with NIL were adamant about college players getting paid.  What did we think was going to happen?

Yeah, athletes put in "extra time" to benefit the university.  The university gets all of the profits and what do the athletes get?  Pfft... just free education, free tutoring, training table, clothes, and a lot more.  The student who works extra hours to get a good grade or actually helps get research grants (university gets "all the profits") doesn't get a free education, free tutoring, training, etc.

All I know is kids don't go to a school to participate in a sport and have pride in the school.  In the past, Wisconsin kids don't come to Wisconsin -- they go to Indiana because they get paid more and, well, their program is much much better.  I'm just bitter.

I think the people who wanted it never would have anticipated that the brightest and best people leading our universities would make such of complete mess of it.

People were likely anticipating that if Nike wanted to pay some QB 5 million dollars to be in a few commercials, then Nike and that player would sign a contract and that player would get 5 million dollars from Nike.

People were likely anticipating that if the local car dealership wanted to pay a popular linebacker 20k to appear in a commercial to sell some pickup trucks, then the dealer and the player would sign a contract and the dealer would pay him 20k.

If EA Sports wanted to make a college football game and put all the player's names and pictures in the game, then the player signs a contract and EA Sports can use their name and image and then if 10,000 players have their name/image in the game, each of those 10,000 get sent a check with 1/10,000th of the pool of money.

So just looking at Wisconsin, we have people like Ted Kellner throwing in bunch of NIL money, umm, for exactly what!?  He is a "retired founder and portfolio manager of Fiduciary Managment Inc."  So what exactly is someone like that getting when he pays for a player's name, image and likeness?

And then we have the universities, who for some reason still insist that they are not paying players to play football, but are rather just paying them for their name, image and likeness.  It seems the only reason for this is because they do not want to have the players classified as employees.  And I can only guess that the reason for that is because they don't want them to unionize (imagine that, LOL).  So we end up with this mess where we don't have actual contracts, even though millions of dollars are exchanging hand (that seems like a really good idea, doesn't it).  And I have no doubt that it will only take one former player and one judge to send this entire house of cards crashing down.  What will happen is anyone's guess.  All I know is that if you are paying someone 100's of thousands of dollars, having an actual legally binding contract would be a real good idea.

 

[JosephC]

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/47456708/ncaa-charlie-baker-players-nba-contracts-not-eligible

Current bottom-tier NBA player wants to get back into college, despite already having played in NBA games.  Baylor signing, and the NCAA clearing, a player that was drafted by the NBA, but two years later appears to be a nothing as far as the NBA is concerned.  As I said on the previous page, might as well just throw out every eligibility rule, including the 4-year limit.  At this rate, there won't be any 18/19/20 years old players on the field/court in 10 years.  It will be all 25-30 year old "ringers" who got flushed out of the big leagues.   Way to go universities plus NCAA, your greed will complete destroy the spirit of college athletics in just a few years.

[homer]

18 minutes ago, JosephC said:

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/47456708/ncaa-charlie-baker-players-nba-contracts-not-eligible

Current bottom-tier NBA player wants to get back into college, despite already having played in NBA games.  Baylor signing, and the NCAA clearing, a player that was drafted by the NBA, but two years later appears to be a nothing as far as the NBA is concerned.  As I said on the previous page, might as well just throw out every eligibility rule, including the 4-year limit.  At this rate, there won't be any 18/19/20 years old players on the field/court in 10 years.  It will be all 25-30 year old "ringers" who got flushed out of the big leagues.   Way to go universities plus NCAA, your greed will complete destroy the spirit of college athletics in just a few years.

Burn it all down. 

[wallus]

I look forward to the guys transfering mid season and mid game. I mean... why not?

[JosephC]

10 years from now.

Broadcaster #1:  And onto the field comes Diego Pavia, 12 year college football veteran.

Broadcaster #2:  It's been a pretty incredible career for Diego.  He lost those 2 years when he didn't make it in the NFL, but what an incredible college football career he has had.

Broadcaster #1:  Now with his 8th different university, Diego has never won a national championship, but his teams have won the conference championship 3 times and he has been a Heisman finalist 3 times.

Broadcaster #2:  Another interesting fact about Diego is that he has amassed 342 college credits, but only has an undergraduate degree in business.  I'm kind of amazed that there are enough college courses available to get 342 credits.

Broadcaster #1:  His college transcript is just as interesting as his football resume.  In the last four years he's changed his major from Public Relations to Ethnic Studies to Anthropology and has moved on to Hospitality this year.

Broadcaster #2:  Wow, what an impressive individual.  Just a reminder to everyone, we are still 3 minutes away from kickoff, so check out the new ESPN gambling app.  Fast and easy to navigate, it just takes seconds to place a wager, so there is still plenty of time to get that last second bet in prior to kickoff.

[JosephC]

If you are Fickell fan (the one left outside of his immediate family), do NOT click on the link.  You have been warned.

https://www.buckys5thquarter.com/wisconsin-badgers-football/88161/wisconsin-badgers-football-news-riley-nowakowski-indiana-hoosiers-not-valued-old-school

[owbc]

Crazy that we're a laughingstock during a time when the Big Ten is far and away the best football conference.

At the current rate, the only way they might lose a bowl game is when two B10 teams are playing each other in the playoff. 

Edit: never mind, USC lost

[nate82]

8 minutes ago, JosephC said:

If you are Fickell fan (the one left outside of his immediate family), do NOT click on the link.  You have been warned.

https://www.buckys5thquarter.com/wisconsin-badgers-football/88161/wisconsin-badgers-football-news-riley-nowakowski-indiana-hoosiers-not-valued-old-school

Not sure how that is on Fickell or a detriment to him.  The UW staff didn’t see him as a pass catching TE and neither did PC’s staff.

Sometimes coaches are wrong about a player it happens a lot and it happens to some of the best coaches.

I am not really all that worried about a 5th year TE that went somewhere else and had success good for him.  The players ahead of him were better than him talent wise.  Also I don’t believe he would have had that much success at WI when the QB couldn’t even stay upright or accurately throw the ball to wide open receivers.

Mason had as many receiving yards as Nowakowski had.  Think about that for a second at Indiana Nowakowski had less receiving yards than Mason did at Wisconsin.  With all of Wisconsin’s problems on offense TE wasn’t one of them.  It was the QB and OL that were the main problems.  You can’t catch passes when the QB is on his back or throwing inaccurately.  

[Jim French Stepstool]

Let's understand, this isn't as simple as saying the colleges & NCAA are greedy. Trust me, colleges aren't thrilled with having to pay out millions. What they CAN be accused of is short-sightedness. Or more to the point, a kick-the-can-down-the-road mentality. @JosephCpointed it out in his recent post, and I have numerous times; the original idea of a stipend, or a player being compensated for his name, image & likeness, is hell & gone from what's going on now. But that idea was resisted for an awfully long time. Now throw in the fact that the NCAA is gun shy about ANYTHING being taken to court due to their long losing streak in that forum & here you are. 

Yes, I attach a % of the blame to the courts for not allowing the NCAA to run its' organization as it sees fit, regardless of the obvious warts. In my own perfect but increasingly delusional world a student athlete, especially in a revenue-generating sport, certainly deserves either a stipend or the ability to go out & market his or her self--WITHOUT the universitys' name, image or likeness being involved. And any athlete who deems that unfair certainly has the option to not accept the free education offered. Pay for your own schooling & deal with a couple decades of paying off the loan. Go straight to the NBA or NFL, or if you aren't good enough at age 17 there's the G-League. Europe. Asia. NFL Europe. Or go out & get a service industry or blue-collar job. Distasteful? Look into a career in a white-collar field (nevermind I forgot, you've already decided to turn down the free education).

And now you have college athletes making money, some of them six & seven figures, playing alongside student-athletes making little or nothing. Think THAT doesn't have the potential to sow some seeds of discontent among young adults who haven't quite grown up yet? Think about that, and now think about the proliferation of gambling. Organized crime has always preyed on the young & stupid who look for a quick buck. Adding envy ("Man, you've done a lot for your team, yet they aren't paying you s***!!! Look at so-and-so, he's gettin' paid, why not you?") is a big, big weapon in their possession.

No one knows where this'll end. But hang on tight.