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.

In this week's episode of The Wisconsin Sportscast, the Packers lost to the Eagles on Monday night in a frustrating game that might have Matt LaFleur and Jordan Love get the same treatment as Luke Fickell in recent weeks. Is a vote of confidence needed? And if so, for who? The offense was awful, both on Monday and in recent weeks. A troubling trend has emerged where the Packers seem completely unable to score in the first half of any game. Oates says it’s because teams are starting to get a handle on what the Packers offense is going to do every play. That’s hard to argue when the Eagles defense yells out exactly where they’re going to run the ball, and then the Packers run it right where they said they would. If the defense calls out exactly what you’re going to do, why would you not take a timeout and make a change?

Whether that falls on LaFleur or on Love, one thing is for certain: this offense isn’t working. The national pundits want LaFleur to take the handcuffs off of his quarterback and see what he can do, and Oates agrees. Love has regressed in recent weeks, and is making more and more bad decisions. But LaFleur has this notion that offense needs to be all about the running game, and he forces it to the point where Love is barely a factor. Sure, he can make some bad decisions and he has his good throws and bad throws, but something has to change. Oates thinks the Packers need to leave their gameplan every once in a while and just let Love take the reins and go. It’s not like we’re scoring points now anyways! 

In a surprising twist, the Badgers were the football team to score a big win in Wisconsin this weekend, taking down Washington on Saturday night. It was such a big win that fans stormed the field, and while some people might turn their nose up as some behavior, at least the fans are engaged. After the season that Badgers have had, a win against a ranked opponent is more than enough reason to celebrate. Not that Madison was without its issues; it’s never good when your punter has the most passing yards of the game. But the freshman Carter Smith looked good, Oates says, and we shouldn’t judge his passing ability on his performance on Saturday. What he did show is that he can run and he can show aggressiveness. We hope to see more of the young freshmen this weekend! 

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.

In this week's episode of The Wisconsin Sportscast, Lucas and Oates spend some time looking at how Badger’s athletics has changed over the years before diving into the mess the Packers made on Sunday. There have been Fire Fickell chants for a while, and now those chants are switching to Fire LaFleur. Both he and Jordan Love had an awful day on Sunday as both of them seemed to be making bad decisions all day. On LaFleur’s end, why would he go for big points with 12 minutes left in the 4th instead of just taking the field goal? On Love’s end, why is he throwing 50 yards downfield to someone with three defenders on him on a first down? Love is, and continues to be, a great quarterback, and is the future of the program. But he has a tendency to make some questionable decisions, especially when he’s up against the clock. That said, LaFleur seems to want to run the ball as much as possible instead of letting his great quarterback throw the ball. The team was simply not ready to play on Sunday. Did LaFleur underestimate the Panthers? Who knows. 

LaFleur seems to act like he has a Super Bowl caliber team at all times, even though they aren’t playing like it. Oates says that yes, the roster itself is capable of a Super Bowl, but there are a handful of Super Bowl rosters in the league right now. And while the roster might be there, they aren’t playing up to snuff. Penalties are killing them, especially holding and motion penalties. These sorts of stupid mistakes are costing the team in a real way, and while they show some signs of greatness here and there they still fall to teams they should easily beat. It’s hard to blame great players every week, which means that the blame has to fall to LaFleur. 

Meanwhile, the Badgers look likely to start a freshman quarterback on Saturday when they take on the Washington Huskies. Carter Smith is a freshman from Florida, and at this point why not play him. It’s not like the job is getting done on the field anyways, worse comes to worse it’s more of the same. We don’t know too much about Smith, but we hear from his coaches in Florida that he’s a dual-threat who can run the ball. We’ll see on Saturday if he can actually live up to that. The real question is: does Luke Fickell know anything about his quarterbacks? Why hasn’t he been playing already? Was it to save a red shirt year? And where’s Billy Edwards? We wish Carter Smith the best, because anything else can’t be worse than what the Badgers are already dealing with. And if he does perform well, that could give the team some momentum through the end of the season and beyond. 

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.

In this week's episode of The Wisconsin Sportscast, Oates lasted all the way until the 17th inning during the marathon Game Three of the World Series on Monday. 19 pitchers hit the mound between both teams, throwing over 600 pitches over the course of six plus hours. The game was long, Lucas says, but it also cements Shohei Ohtani as maybe the greatest baseball player ever. He was getting the Barry Bonds treatment, drawing four intentional walks, but still delivered a great performance. Did the marathon of a game convince Oates that baserunners in extra innings is a good idea? Of course not.

Meanwhile, the Green Bay Packers defeated the Steelers on Sunday night as Jordan Love played possibly the best game of his life against his former mentor. Sure, the Steelers defense wasn’t the most impressive thing in the world, but he showed significant growth on Sunday night. Love was patient and calm under the pressure of an intense pass rush, and if he continues to play like that the Packers will be in excellent shape. Especially if Love can continue to work with Tucker Kraft, who very well might be the best tight end in football today. Combine him with a returning Christian Watson and the Packers looked mighty tough Sunday night. The Packers play the Panthers this upcoming Sunday before taking on the Eagles in Monday Night Football. A win against the Eagles in November might prove to be very important come playoff time this year…

Sticking with football, the Badgers fell again to Oregon on Saturday. At least this time they managed to actually score a touchdown. The defense actually played pretty well, Oates thinks, effectively shutting down the Oregon defense during the first half. They played tough and competitive, but how many times have we said that this year? The offense looked about as bad as they have been, and they are unable to move the ball either on the ground or in the air. Hunter Simmons has shown himself to be completely overmatched at this level, and Lucas and Oates both think it’s time for a change. Billy Edwards’ future is still uncertain, but why Simmons is still playing over Danny O’Neil is completely unknown. Do the Badgers have a chance at any viable wins left this year? Likely not against Washington or Indianna, but Illinois? Minnesota? Anybody? 

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.

In this week's episode of The Wisconsin Sportscast, Wisconsin Athletic Director Chris McIntosh has issued a vote of confidence for Badger’s Football Coach Luke Fickell. Is it usually a good thing when you have to give a vote of confidence to your head coach in a public letter to the fans? In the letter that was too long and gave too little specifics, McIntosh promised to pour more resources into the football program in Madison. Which makes you ask the question: how? If you ask any other athletic program in Madison, you’ll hear how every penny is already going to the football program that continues to falter. The letter is being panned by just about everyone, and the whole thing feels desperate. What are people supposed to take away from this letter? Do you really think that anyone is going to open up their wallets after they got shut out two weeks in a row, for the first time since 1977? At least these days, the players aren’t going off to try and fight the fans after the game…

People are starting to tune out of Badgers football. They aren’t renewing their season tickets, and why should they if this is what they can expect again next year? Despite the best efforts of the players, who did give their best effort on Saturday, the student section never filled up. The only reason students go to games now is to Jump Around and boo. Madison is not used to this sort of uncompetitiveness and the benefit of the doubt is running out. If we can give Fickell one thing it’s how he’s been able to handle the media. He isn’t shying away from questions like some coaches in the past, and he isn’t lashing out at the media when they ask tough questions. At the end of the day, Oates says that Fickell will not be the one to turn this program around. 

It’s a stark contrast to look at schools like Vanderbilt and Indiana, who are succeeding this year while the Badgers continue to fall. There is actually a pretty easy answer to why that is, Oates says: money. In the era of NIL, the things that used to matter like facilities, tv appearances, tradition, and even academics don’t matter to the players anymore. What matters is which school has the biggest billionaire behind them who’s willing to write the biggest check. It almost sounds like another sport that Wisconsin sports fans are all too familiar with this past week… 

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.

In this week's episode of The Wisconsin Sportscast, Oates is away on business so Lucas is joined by the voice of the Wisconsin Badgers: Mike Mahke! Mike has been the voice of Camp Randall and the Kohl Center for decades, and continued to do his job even during the Badgers’ dumbfounding defeat by Iowa on Saturday. The game started on a high note, with Monte Ball being honored for his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. Surely at least a few fans were wondering if he still had any years of eligibility left in him… When calling a game like Saturday, Mike says it’s not always as hard as it seems, though it is less fun. He’s there to do a job, he says, and will continue to provide information and optimism in even the toughest times.

After Saturday’s loss to Iowa, many fans are feeling both angry and sad, with some even beginning to tune out. Early in the game on Saturday, Mike says that everyone in those stands wanted to be there and were pulling for a competitive victory. But as the game went on and the opportunities began to slip away, he could feel it. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to tune out, Mike says. Badger fans are fans through thick and thin, and need to stay behind their team. At the very least, they should follow what Luke Fickell has to say: be mad at the coach but not at the players on the field. 

Next weekend, the Badgers take on Ohio State at home. It’ll be a tough fight, Mike thinks, specifically for the Badgers’ defense. They’ll need to do more that they showed against Iowa if they want to have any chance of slowing Ohio State. But if you’re still looking for a reason to go on Saturday, there will be a special celebration for the Badgers’ Rose Bowl winning teams, especially for Ron Dayne and Barry Alvarez. Who knows, there might even be a Ron Dayne call echoing through Camp Randall once again… 

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.

In this week's episode of The Wisconsin Sportscast, Joe Flacco didn’t seem to get enough of the Green Bay Packers. Earlier this week he was traded from the Browns over to the Bengals, who happen to face the Packers this Sunday. The Browns gain a 5th round draft pick in 2026, and the Bengals get a replacement for the injured Joe Burrow, which seems like a pretty good trade. He seems likely to play against the Packers again this weekend, can he beat the Packers a second time? Maybe, but that all depends on if you thought it was him who beat the Packers the first time a few weeks ago. Flacco was awful when the Browns beat the Packers, and has only a 58% completion rate this season with six interceptions. If the Packers can put pressure on him, he should be dead in the water. At 40 years old, he can’t run even if he still does have a good arm. The Packers should be able to beat the Bengals this weekend, and after that have a good stretch ahead of them: Arizona, then Pittsburg, then Carolina, then the Eagles. It’s not unreasonable to expect them to go four-for-four in that stretch! At the very least, they better rack up at least three wins in that stretch. 

In college football, the Badgers stunk it up once again in their loss against Michigan. They had two good drives all game: their first drive where they got a touchdown and their last drive where they got a field goal. But the sloppy play wasn’t the biggest concern on Saturday, it was Luke Fickell’s “strategy.” Not even the TV experts could understand why he wouldn’t take a timeout at the end of the game. Oates has two theories. One is the answer given by Fickell, that it was a strategy that failed big time. The other theory is what many fans, including Oates, think actually happened: Fickell waved the white flag to prevent Michigan from running up the score. Fans are upset, as they should be, with Joe Klatt loudly calling the “strategy” a bad look to the entire nation. This weekend they play Iowa, in what both should be and needs to be a win.

Finally, as of recording on Tuesday the Brewers have taken the first two games in their NLDS series against the Cubs. The Miz left his sloppy slump to give an electric performance on the mound during a bullpen game that saw him pitching for three innings. In those three innings, he threw 31 pitches at 100 mph or higher, capping out at 104.3! The Brewers used him exactly how they needed to use him, Oates says. He isn’t ready as a playoff starter, but letting him do his thing for a few innings here and there worked to throw the Cubs off their game. But the real dagger on Monday wasn’t the Miz, it was Andrew Vaughn’s three-run homer in the bottom of the first. The Cubs still have a chance to turn things around, so the Brewers can’t slow down, but Monday’s game seemed to put a real stamp on the entire Cubs organization.

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.

In this week's episode of The Wisconsin Sportscast, the Packers reached a tie against the Cowboys late Sunday evening, which makes us ask the question: why even have ties in the NFL? The league says it’s to promote “the health of the athletes,” but Oates isn’t buying it. After all, if that were true, they wouldn’t be trying to add more games onto each season. The changes to how overtime works are nothing but grandstanding by the NFL, Oates says, and ultimately doesn’t make much sense. Sure, college overtime rules aren’t too much better and nobody wants to see a field goal competition to end a game. What they should do, Lucas thinks, is have a 10 minute quarter and if there is no winner at 10 minutes keep going until it is no longer a tie. Or, better yet, just play one 15 minute quarter!

Tie notwithstanding, Sunday was a horrible night for the Packers across the board. Starting with clock management, there were issues across the entire game. It really makes you wonder if the Packers weren’t so aggressive at the end of the first half and gave up a touchdown what the rest of the game would have looked like. It’s an outstanding problem with Matt LaFleur, says Oates: he’s aggressive when he needs to be passive and passive when he needs to be aggressive. Just look at the field goal that brought the game to a tie. Turning to the defense, the Packers should not have allowed the Cowboys to run up the score the way they did. There was no pass rush outside of Micah Parsons, and the secondary was terrible throughout the entire game outside of Keisean Nixon. Where was the blitzing? Dak Prescott might not be a grade-A quarterback, but he is a veteran who if left alone all day will find somewhere to throw the ball. Finally, the special teams once again proved to be a major problem. The Packers have a bye week this week followed by a game against the Bengals in Green Bay, which better be a glorified bye week again.

Turning quickly to college football, the Badgers will come off their own bye week to take on Michigan this Saturday. They enter the game the underdogs by a good margin, if you believe the point spread, but Oates thinks it might be more complicated than that. Michigan has a young quarterback who might be able to be exploited if Madison’s defence does their job correctly. Either way, you should be able to expect a good effort out of the Badgers this weekend, and hopefully Michigan decides to take them lightly.

Finally, postseason baseball is here with the Brewers sitting with more wins than anyone in baseball. They’ll play  someone this weekend, the question becomes who? Both the Padres and the Cubs are good and basically equal in both hitting and pitching. Either way, it’ll be a tough series against a team that currently has the season on the Brewers. One thing is for sure though. Whoever we face won’t have the top payroll in all of the MLB. That team couldn’t even make the playoffs…

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.

In this week's episode of The Wisconsin Sportscast, the Badgers lost a must-win game against Maryland on Saturday, causing the fans to act in a way that has some people a bit perturbed. Boos were loud in Camp Randall, and with half the stadium gone in the fourth quarter the “Fire Fickell” chants were also loud. Lucas and Oates agree that the Fire Fickell chants were uncalled for, but they also don’t love how former Athletic Director and Badger Football Coach Barry Alvarez reacted to the calls. On his radio show earlier this week, he said that the fans are spoiled rotten, and it's disrespectful to flip on the team this early in the season. He did walk back his tone a little bit, and Oates doesn’t disagree with the sentiment behind the statements, but he also doesn’t think it’s doing anything to help the program when people are already tuning out.

There was a lot of blame going around, along with votes of confidence for those being blamed, but Lucas returns to an old question: can you boo college athletes? In the past, he says no. Once upon a time college athletes were still student athletes doing their best. But in today’s game, these players are getting paid not insignificant amounts of money. That makes them pros, and open to boos. Who can blame the fans for booing a professional player who they don’t even know? It’s not like the old days where you could watch a player grow over the course of four years; today’s college athletes are staying for a year or maybe two then moving to where the money is. Would Lucas boo? No, but it’s all fair game when there is no loyalty except to the money. 

Speaking of horrible football losses, the Packers fell to the Browns on Sunday in an all around awful game. Specifically, it was Jordan Love’s interception that cost Green Bay the game in the fourth quarter. At least here the blame can only lay with two people. Jordan Love should have seen the defender coming and adjusted as needed. The play looked a lot more like Brett Favre than Aaron Rodgers. But the playcall was also bad, a fact that Matt LaFleur owned up to. At the end of the day, they are both at fault and that play cost them the game. It doesn’t help when the offensive line completely falls apart, with Zach Thom and Aaron Banks leaving the game once again due to injury. The Browns defense did their job against the Packers, making sure that Love was never comfortable, and Myles Garrett showed why he’s a great player. But don’t get too caught up on the loss, Oates says, the Packers have a history of overlooking an opponent. Maybe now certain players will stop running their mouths about how the Green and Gold are unstoppable… 

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.

In this week's episode of The Wisconsin Sportscast, there’s one big question on the minds of Madison sports fans these days: can the Badgers Football team stay relevant? After their loss to Alabama this weekend, Oates thinks they look no better off than they were last year. Sure, they’ve made some changes and added some veteran players, but that didn’t pay off on the field. We weren’t expecting them to beat Alabama, but their blowout loss was tough. Sure, they are down their starting quarterback, but that doesn’t excuse everything. Oates says it all comes down to recruiting. Wisconsin high schools are great at making really good offensive linemen, and the Badgers pursued none of them this year. Instead, the state’s top prospects went to Notre Dame and Minnesota. If they want to run the ball, which we assume they do, they need a good offensive line. To not recruit Wisconsin linemen means their entire offense is going to suffer.

This weekend the Badgers will take on Maryland in their first Big 10 matchup of the year. Maryland might hold a 3-0 record, but the Badgers are still favored. It might be the last time in a long while they enter a game favored, maybe even the last time this season depending on how Minnesota and Washington shape up. If they beat Maryland on Saturday, then we can breathe a sigh of relief and start to really look at the rest of the conference matchups. If they lose, then everyone has to be on notice. Because after Saturday, the Badgers will be facing a murderers row of tough teams for weeks. They need to start developing a winning attitude, and to do that you need to win some conference games.  

One thing on the Badgers side is that nobody seems to have turf toe, which can’t be said about the NFL. Quarterbacks have been going down across the league, including Joe Burrow who will be out for months at least with turf toe. Jayden Daniels, Justin Fields, and JJ McCarthy are also out with injury. The Packers understand just how hard it is to play competitively when you lose your starting quarterback. At least the Bengals have moves to make, signing former Packer Sean Clifford onto their squad. Speaking of, the Packers will take on the Browns on Sunday after another dominant victory last week. Still, Green Bay shouldn’t take them too lightly. They have some good players in Cleveland, they just make a lot of bad quarterback decisions. Add on the mounting injuries the Packers are already facing, and they can’t assume an easy victory on Sunday. 

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.