9 thoughts about Wisconsin football recruiting after 2026 early signing period
There's a lot to dive into with recruiting rankings, new philosophies and more regarding the Badgers.
Luke Fickell used some new terminology last week to describe his University of Wisconsin football signees.
Draft picks.
Wisconsin signed 22 scholarship players for its 2024 class, then 23 last December for its 2025 class.
The Badgers finished the 2026 early signing period with only 13 scholarship signees. That number would have been higher if not for some notable decommitments and flips in the last month, but coach Luke Fickell and his staff likely wouldn’t have reached the number of signees seen in the last two recruiting cycles.
Fickell used the term “draft picks” at least three times during his 32-minute news conference last week.
“And the change in the philosophy was a little bit more of saying, ‘How many guys do you really want to bring in?’” Fickell said Wednesday. “And it’s not that we didn’t want to, or don’t want to bring in young guys or freshman guys. The idea of saying, ‘Hey, do you want to bring in 22 high school kids?’ That’s kind of shifted, and the idea of hey, let’s go with the higher value of guy, invest in them like you would do in a draft, and then maybe not take as many.
“Obviously, that means you can get a little bit older sometimes, and you got to go the portal route, which is obviously a little bit more of the way of the world. I’m not saying we’re going away from high school guys, but the idea was, hey, let’s make sure the guys we’re going for in high school, we’re going to invest more in. We’re going to expect that they can come in and contribute as a freshman, whether it’s even special teams.”
Here are Badger Observer takeaways from Wisconsin’s early signing period and 2026 recruiting cycle overall.