Wisconsin football continued its momentum on the class of 2024 recruiting trail yesterday with commitments from four-star OL Kevin Haywood and three-star iOL Ryan Cory. The two additions bring Wisconsin’s tally to 12 total commitments in Luke Fickell’s first full class as head coach, four of which coming in the past week.
June is always a productive period for college football recruiting, as recruits are able to embark on official visits and begin to solidify their future plans. The month is especially pivotal for Wisconsin, with few cities showing better than Madison in the summer months.
The Badgers are already capitalizing on the opportunity June provides with the recent 2024 commitments mentioned above. This recent run paired with the impressive foundation Fickell and his staff began to lay at the start of the 2023 calendar year now has the program up to No. 15 in 247Sports’ national recruiting rankings.
While it is still early, nobody can knock the work Fickell has done acquiring talent for the future. Having a hot run in the transfer portal after being hired and salvaging the 2023 class are one thing, but excelling for full cycles is what truly separates the national contenders from the rest. With that in mind, initial returns on Fickell’s first full class, the most important class for any coach new to a program, are overwhelmingly positive.
Wisconsin and its new head coach are still in the honeymoon period, with the first full recruiting cycle now halfway finished and games not scheduled for another three months. It will be at that point when the verdict can start to be reached on how far he can take this program. But this is college football, not the NFL or other professional sports. Recruiting is the sport’s lifeblood. Any coach to reach the exclusive club of national champions has assuredly done so after months, or years, of work acquiring talent and raising a program’s national relevance.
Badger fans have the right to be filled with thrill and excitement about what Fickell is doing on the recruiting trail. Turning a big June visit weekend into several more top commitments should only continue those feelings.