In this week's episode of The Wisconsin Sportscast, the Badgers take on Illinois in Camp Randall on Saturday evening, in a game that’ll bring some familiar faces to the field. On top of the handful of defensive players and some assistants too, most everyone will recognize Bret Bielema standing as Illinois’ head coach. He’s done pretty well for himself in Illinois, and even with that history this is still not going to be seen as a rivalry game. Why is that? In professional sports, it’s always a big deal when Wisconsin takes on Illinois, but not in college and especially not in football. There might be some individual squabbles, sure, but at this point Northwestern is seen as more of a rival than Illinois. 

Saturday’s game will be the first Wisconsin-Illinois game in Madison since 2022, when the Badgers played a miserable second half and Paul Chryst got sacked the next day. Think that’ll be on Fickell’s mind? Probably not, especially as it seems he might have saved his job. Yes, they lost badly to Indianna, but the team played hard. Pair that with the win over Washington (and the handful of votes of confidence), and we can be sure that Fickell will be back as head coach next year. The real question will be: is Carter Smith going to be the future of the program? It’s too early to say, says Oates, but we’ll know more in these last two games. One thing we know for sure is that he shows promise and we still don’t know anything about Billy Edwards anyways.

The Packers, meanwhile, got a tight win over the Giants on Sunday. The game was tighter than it should have been, but don’t put that on Jordan Love. He played pretty well, says Lucas, especially in the game-winning drive. Most of his missed passes were actually drops thanks to the young receiving core the Packers still struggle with. If Love could just learn how to slide, and when, maybe he’d be seen more for the quarterback that he is. 

The Wisconsin Sportscast with Lucas & Oates is a Cap Times podcast produced by Nate Wegehaupt. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.