PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Rutgers football head coach Greg Schiano has nothing but respect for Luke Fickell, the head coach of Wisconsin. It is respect born from being colleagues at a previous stop in both of their coaching careers.
Schiano and Fickell overlapped at Ohio State for one season in 2016; Schiano was the associate head coach for the Buckeyes that year and Fickell had spent the previous five seasons as defensive coordinator and linebackers coach in Columbus.
From there, Fickell turned Cincinnati into a College Football Playoff team. And now he is in his first year of a moderate rebuild at Wisconsin, who hosts Rutgers this Saturday.
The Badgers are currently 3-1 (1-0 Big Ten). Schiano brought up Fickell on Monday while answering a question about the Wisconsin defense.
“And you know, I know Coach Fickell well, he’s an excellent coach,” Schiano said on Monday.
“We worked together for a year. One of the best coaches I’ve been around, literally, from an X and O standpoint, from a motivation standpoint, just everything and a great man, great family. He really does an awesome job. He did it at Cincinnati, he’ll do it there. Really, like I said, one of the best I’ve been around.”
Wisconsin is coming off a bye week. In Week 4, they took apart Purdue in their Big Ten opener.
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Their only loss of the season came at Washington State (4-0).
Rutgers is off to their best start of the Schiano 2.0 era (4-1, 1-1 Big Ten). They have two Power Five wins this year, having beaten fellow Big Ten program Northwestern in the season opener for both teams and then beating Virginia Tech in Week 3.
Rutgers dropped their only road game of the season, in Week 4 at Michigan. They rebounded this past Saturday with a 52-3 win over Wagner.