The Big Ten doesn’t hand out patience very often. With three different conference teams winning the national championship over the past three seasons, the pressure on coaches is baked in from the start. And after four coaching changes in the league a year ago, it’s clear the churn isn’t slowing down.
Looking ahead to 2026, there’s already a sense that more movement is coming. Some coaches are fighting to keep their jobs.
Others could win enough to get courted somewhere else. A few names stand out.
At Maryland, Mike Locksley has been around long enough to feel like part of the furniture. He was the Terrapins’ offensive coordinator and interim head coach in 2015 before getting the full-time job in 2019.
Now entering his eighth season, he’s sitting on a 37-49 record and is coming off consecutive 4-8 finishes. Maryland’s ongoing tug-of-war between basketball and football for resources has made life harder, but the recent results are still tough to defend.
Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell is in a different kind of pressure cooker. Plenty of people believed he should have been gone after last season, but the Badgers kept him and poured more into the roster instead.
Even so, the numbers haven’t been kind: he’s 17-21 through three seasons in Madison. Quarterback play has been a huge part of the problem, and Wisconsin is again trying to solve it with Colton Joseph, who arrives from Old Dominion after completing 59.7 percent of his passes for 21 touchdowns and 10 interceptions.
Fickell needs that move - and the rest of the roster work - to pay off.
On the other side of the equation, Jedd Fisch looks like the kind of coach other schools will keep watching. He’s already made one conference-to-conference jump, leaving Pac-12 Arizona for Pac-12 Washington before the Huskies moved into the Big Ten.
He also, apparently, took a run at the Florida job before deciding to stay put. That doesn’t guarantee anything, but it does tell you Fisch is open to a bigger opportunity if the right one comes along.
A strong season would only sharpen that attention.
David Braun is another name that could draw interest. He stepped into Northwestern during a scandal, and the expectation was that the Wildcats would collapse.
They didn’t. Instead, they went 8-5 and earned him the permanent job.
Three seasons later, Braun is 19-19 with two bowl wins in what might be the toughest job in the conference. He’s only 41, and if he puts together another good year, it wouldn’t be a surprise if a better-resourced program comes calling.
In Other News...
Badgers Face Painful New Uncertainty Around Promising Back Gideon Ituka
Gideon Itukas future has become one of the most sobering storylines around Wisconsin this offseason. The running back was not included on the official 2026 roster, a notable sign for a player who had been expected to be part of the programs backfield mix before last seasons injury changed everything. Even with that uncertainty, Ituka remains around the team and continues to be involved in some capacity as he works through the aftermath of a severe setback.
Luke Fickells latest update only deepened the concern, because the coach made clear there is no clean timeline for a return. For a player who still had reasons to believe he could carve out a role in Madison, the issue now is less about when he might be back and more about whether he will ever be cleared to play contact football again. [Read more 🡒]
Badgers Making Early Push For In-State Lineman Fans Need To Watch
Wisconsin has already made contact with in-state defensive lineman Zachery Lavoe, a 2028 prospect who is starting to pick up real early attention. The Badgers have also lined up a campus visit for him on Sept. 19, giving the staff a closer look at a player who is still early in the recruiting process but already on the radar of several programs.
Lavoe has drawn interest from Missouri, Minnesota and Iowa State, though he has not landed a scholarship offer yet. For Wisconsin, the bigger question is how he would fit along the defensive front, especially as the staff continues sorting out its board and weighing where he might line up alongside other targets such as Hendrix Dawson. [Read more 🡒]
Luke Fickell Finally Said What Wisconsin Fans Needed To Hear
At Big Ten media day, Luke Fickell sounded like a coach who knows Wisconsin can no longer lean on its history to do the heavy lifting. He said the program has fallen short of the standard it expects, and he pointed to a series of behind-the-scenes changes over the last nine months in how the Badgers operate, prepare and recover as evidence that the reset is already underway.
Fickell also made clear that the support structure around the program looks different now, with more help in the front office, on the coaching staff and in recruiting than before. For Wisconsin fans, the encouraging part was not just the acknowledgment of what has gone wrong, but the sense that the Badgers are trying to rebuild the identity that has long defined them, with a renewed emphasis on toughness and discipline going forward. [Read more 🡒]