MADISON, Wis. — When Luke Fickell sat down last June to discuss Wisconsin’s in-state recruiting efforts in his first year, he made his point crystal clear: We have to be better. And we won’t stop until we are.
At the time, the Badgers were in the midst of an atypical recruiting cycle. Within five days, they had lost Mukwonago offensive lineman Nathan Roy, the top-ranked player in the state, to Minnesota. He became the first 247Sports Composite No. 1 in-state player not to sign with Wisconsin in eight years. The Badgers also had lost committed tight end Rob Booker II, who flipped to UCLA (though he would ultimately still sign with Wisconsin).
Throw in the fact that Wisconsin missed out on offensive lineman Garrett Sexton and didn’t re-offer running back Corey Smith and offensive lineman Donovan Harbour — all three of whom went to Penn State — and it felt to those outside the program as though one of the Badgers’ most sizable traditional advantages was crumbling. After all, a foundational principle established by former Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez had been to build a wall around the state and not relinquish it.
Fickell vowed to fight against any dismantling in the future with an understanding of the value of securing those in-state players. But he also recognized the fight wouldn’t be easy considering his coaching staff was new, with minimal ties to people in the state other than director of scouting Casey Rabach, and that several major programs had begun to create a foothold in the area with coaches who had longer-standing relationships with prospects than Fickell.
Nine months later, with a full recruiting cycle behind him and an eye toward the 2025 class and beyond, Fickell was asked last week to assess where things stood and whether he believed his staff had made inroads within the state. He provided a similar refrain.
“We’re not there yet,” Fickell said. “We’re making progress, but we’re not there. We cannot lose the kids within the state that we need to have and we need to get. It’s not going to get any easier because there’s recognition of some great players within the state. I don’t know that there’s as many as there are in Florida or Georgia or California or Texas. But there’s as many high-end of guys as there are in most any places.
“It might be three or four of them. But those are the ones where you’ve got to do a damn good job. Sometimes that means, especially around here, starting and knowing who those guys might be as freshmen and sophomores. Whether you’re behind, it’s not an excuse. You’ve got to find a way to close.”
Fickell can’t discuss specific recruits under NCAA rules. But the two highest-ranked 2025 in-state players with Wisconsin offers are once again heading elsewhere: offensive tackle Owen Strebig and tight end James Flanigan, both of whom have committed to Notre Dame. Wisconsin is set to go consecutive years without landing the top two players from the state for the first time in the internet recruiting rankings era.
Every recruiting cycle presents its own unique challenges because every prospect has a different story and different reasons for picking a school. The past two years have been especially interesting. Roy, a West Coast native, didn’t move to Wisconsin until before his sophomore year and therefore didn’t have particularly strong ties to the Badgers, as so many previous in-state recruits did.
Flanigan’s dad, Jim Flanigan Jr., was a defensive lineman at Notre Dame in the early 1990s, so the decision to follow in his footsteps made sense. Flanigan Jr. famously helped Alvarez by visiting campus at Alvarez’s request and saying positive things about the program to build support despite him already being committed to Notre Dame.
Strebig, meanwhile, had great admiration for Wisconsin. But that admiration began with his relationship with former Badgers offensive line coach Joe Rudolph, whom he met as a high school freshman. Rudolph, now the offensive line coach at Notre Dame, was a major selling point for Strebig, who visited South Bend six times during his recruitment. Strebig did keep Wisconsin among his finalists, though the fact the Badgers hired a fourth offensive line coach in as many seasons made building bonds with a position coach seemingly impossible.
Strebig, for his part, praised the efforts of the new staff, which included Rabach, as well as Fickell’s two head recruiters that he brought with him from Cincinnati, Pat Lambert and Max Stienecker.
“I have nothing but respect for the staff at Wisconsin,” Strebig said. “There is nothing they could have done differently for my recruitment. It is all about finding the right fit for yourself, which in this case was Notre Dame.
“The recruiting team of Max, Pat and Casey are some of the best people I have met. For in-state-wise, it’s all a matter of what the recruits feel like is home to them.”
The question is: How does Fickell convince those players that Wisconsin is home? From 2017-21, former Badgers coach Paul Chryst signed 21 of the 25 in-state players ranked in the top five and did not ink fewer than three of the top five in any of those classes. Sixteen of those 21 players went on to start at least one game for Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s in-state recruiting suffered with the 2022 class amid the pandemic, when three four-star players — offensive lineman Billy Schrauth (Notre Dame), offensive lineman Carson Hinzman (Ohio State) and tight end Jerry Cross (Penn State) — committed elsewhere. Notre Dame and Penn State, in particular, have been a presence in Wisconsin ever since.
Fickell has a history of building a program around in-state recruiting. In his final two full recruiting classes at Cincinnati in 2021 and 2022, the Bearcats signed 17 scholarship players from the state of Ohio. The state of Florida was next with six signees. Fickell averaged 10 1/2 commitments from Ohio per recruiting class at Cincinnati from 2017 to 2022. But the sheer volume of FBS-level talent in the state was well beyo
Wisconsin has still made recruiting the state a significant priority. The Badgers have commitments from three 2025 in-state prospects one cycle after they signed three from the state in 2024. Offensive lineman Michael Roeske (Wautoma), linebacker Cooper Catalano (Germantown) and defensive lineman Torin Pettaway (Middleton) all are committed to the Badgers in 2025. Roeske had offers from Notre Dame and Michigan. Pettaway picked up offers from Nebraska, Minnesota and USC before Wisconsin offered and closed out his recruitment.
Roeske is ranked third in the state, Catalano fifth and Pettaway sixth. Wisconsin has an offer out to uncommitted cornerback Tre Poteat, who is ranked fourth. Wisconsin also has leaned heavily into the Chicagoland area, which is part of the initial 350-mile radius from campus that Fickell wanted to emphasize. Four Chicagoland players signed in the 2024 class, including three four-star prospects: running back Darrion Dupree, tight end Grant Stec and defensive lineman Dillan Johnson.
But times clearly have changed, particularly since Wisconsin was a Big Ten doormat 34 years ago and Alvarez needed to determine how to build momentum for his program. Wisconsin’s success over the years and its visibility on TV has helped the Badgers to become a national brand, which is something Fickell discovered during his first year in Madison. Fourteen of his 22 signees in 2024 fell outside his 350-mile radius.
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In this day and age, and with where Fickell wants to take the program, there is an argument to be made that in-state recruiting doesn’t necessarily mean what it once did, as long as Wisconsin finds the best players that fit its scheme. None of Wisconsin’s 11 four-star signees in the 2024 class — a program record in the internet recruiting ranking era — were from the state. That helped Wisconsin finish the cycle with the No. 23 class in the country, which is second for the program behind the 2021 class that finished No. 16. Wisconsin has nine commits in the 2025 class, and six are from out of state, including two from Ohio.
In his first year, Fickell said he was perhaps most proud of Wisconsin’s out-of-state recruiting efforts, though he won’t be satisfied until he can blend that success with more results from inside the state.
“The only thing that’s still not above where we need to be is probably our in-state,” Fickell said. “Everything else I would really say is above where I think we need to be in order to be successful and do what we need to do. If we can get our in-state above what the expectation would be, then I think we’d be right where we need to be.”
To get there, Wisconsin must overcome new challenges for in-state players, such as how early programs are able to identify recruits because of their visibility through highlight videos, social media and recruiting services. The addition of NIL incentives has created a further complication. Wisconsin’s Varsity Collective has kept its efforts close to the vest in terms of financial resources, though Fickell has stressed to players that they will be taken care of in some capacity if they join the program. Fickell was asked how well-positioned Wisconsin was for its future as a program through its NIL efforts.
“We’re not where we need to be yet,” Fickell said. “But I’m not sure there’s going to be anybody that would say they are if you sat down and asked, ‘Hey, do you think you’re where you need to be in the NIL world?’ No because it’s always growing, whether that’s figuratively or comparatively speaking of Oregon and SC to where we are.
“For us and for our program, we’re not where we need to be and we need to keep pushing. But I’m not sure there’s anything in our program where we need to be. I think our out-of-state recruiting in some of those ways is. But it’s not everything.”
nd what Wisconsin has ever produced in a single recruiting class, which meant prospects could be shared among several schools. That is not the case for the Badgers.
