Wisconsin’s football program is heading into 2026 with plenty of doubt hanging over it, but new athletic director Shawn Eichorst is urging fans to look forward instead of staying stuck on the frustration of the last two seasons.
Eichorst, who arrived in July after eight years as the deputy AD at Texas, said he sees a chance for the Badgers to reset around a simple idea: stay positive, stay together, and keep moving. He’s been around fall camp practices and is also working to meet every athlete and every employee in the UW athletic department.
“I think every season allows us to have optimism,” Eichorst said during a recent visit to the Journal Sentinel. “I think if we’re positive and we’re united, we have an opportunity.”
That message comes at a time when Wisconsin fans have made their feelings pretty clear. The Badgers averaged just 49,063 tickets scanned per game in 2025, which worked out to about 68% of Camp Randall Stadium being filled.
The “Fire Fickell” chants were often loud. An open records request for 2026 season ticket sales is still pending, but the drop in interest was enough for the athletic department to cut its overall ticket sales projection by 11.6% in the 2026-27 budget.
Eichorst said he understands the mood and doesn’t see that passion as a bad thing.
“passionate, just like me, just like everybody else.”
He also pointed to the work being done inside the program, saying Wisconsin’s coaches and players deserve support as they try to turn things around.
“Our young people work really hard every single day,” Eichorst said. “Our coaching staff is working hard every single day to be successful at what they do. And we need to provide them the support, and we need to look at it as a new season.”
The stakes around 2026 are obvious. Wisconsin is chasing its first winning season since 2023, which was Luke Fickell’s first year. If the Badgers get to eight wins, it would be their first time reaching that mark since 2021, Paul Chryst’s last full season.
The recent numbers have been rough. Wisconsin’s back-to-back losing seasons in 2024 and 2025 were the program’s first since the early 1990s, and the consecutive shutout losses to Iowa and Ohio State in 2025 were the first of their kind since 1977.
“Wisconsin has a long history and tradition of ups and downs relative to almost all of our sports, and so I see an opportunity for us to come together and help move that program forward,” Eichorst said.
Still, he’s not lowering the bar. Eichorst made clear that Wisconsin’s expectations remain high, even if he isn’t ready to define exactly what success will look like in his first season on the job.
“There’ll be a time and a place at the end of the day to evaluate it all, but I’m really optimistic and excited for the upcoming season,” Eichorst said.
For now, he said he’s still getting his arms around the program before making any broader judgments.
“I’m still trying to figure out all the things that are going on within our program,” said Eichorst. “Once I get a good sense of all of that stuff, then we can make an evaluation.”
What he does want, though, is steady progress.
“That’s how good programs develop over a period of time,” Eichorst said. “So I’ll be looking to see each day as we move forward, the progress that we make. And if you stack those days and you have an opportunity to win games, I think we’ll all be proud of our programs.”
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