Inside Vince Biegel’s return to Wisconsin football’s facilities
The former all-Big Ten and NFL outside linebackers spoke with Badger Observer about his time with the team Wednesday.
Vince Biegel walked into a familiar room at the University of Wisconsin football facilities this week.
This time it wasn’t as an all-conference outside linebacker that helped set a new standard for the position group, but as a former player talking to the next generation of Badgers edge rushers.
Biegel was in Madison earlier this week, first in attendance for the welcoming of new Wisconsin athletic director Shawn Eichorst on Tuesday. He returned to campus a day later to spend time not only with the football program, where he still ranks in the top 10 for career sacks (21½) and tackles for loss (39½), but also visit his wife’s former adapted fitness program.
There were reminders of his legacy upon entering that same outside linebacker room where he was a two-time second-team All-Big Ten honoree between 2012-16. But that also extended to the position group as whole that pushed each other and saw many move on to the NFL.
“And it was cool because they threw up all of the former outside linebackers up on the wall,” Biegel said. “It was T.J. Watt, Joe Schobert, myself, Andrew Van Ginkel, and Zack Baun.
“And I was like, ‘Damn, that’s really cool, man,’ to see, kind of we were all in one room together, and not just those guys. But we had Leon Jacobs, Garret Dooley. Ryan Connelly, T.J. Edwards, Jack Cichy, those guys are in the inside linebacker room. That was a crazy string of guys we had there.”
