Rebuild the Badgers, Not Just the Roster
Junjie Guo and Ananth Seshadri
Executive Summary
Wisconsin football’s old model worked. The Badgers found players other programs missed, developed them, and kept them, winning the second-most Big Ten conference games from 2017 through 2019 while ranking ninth in football spending. Name, image, and likeness (NIL) compensation and freer transfer rules changed that bargain. Development still matters, but success now creates a retention bill.
Wisconsin entered the new market with less room to adjust than many peers. Between the FY2017–19 and FY2022–25 averages, its real Athletics operating spending fell 4.2 percent, the weakest growth among the sixteen public Big Ten programs, while the median of the sixteen rose 7.3 percent. Football’s reported share of Wisconsin’s Athletics spending, 22.7 percent in FY2025 on the federal EADA measure, was the lowest in the Big Ten. By November 2021, Wisconsin listed no dedicated recruiting or player-personnel staff, against a conference average of about 4.5.
Wisconsin has since responded. It rebuilt its recruiting operation in 2022, expanded player personnel, scouting, NIL, and commercial capacity, and now has roster resources roughly in the middle of the Big Ten. Those responses have to survive future changes in leadership and the market. The immediate football-side rebuild is now well underway. The harder question is whether it lasts.
The rebuild exposes an institutional problem: who controls borrowing and project delivery. Every other Big Ten university can access capital markets on university or system credit. UW–Madison cannot; the State of Wisconsin issues its debt. The issue is especially visible as Wisconsin simultaneously takes on larger annual player costs and completes the $285.2 million Kellner Family Athletic Center, a long-lived investment. Player commitments recur every year and require recurring resources. Long-lived facilities can be financed over the years they are used, with repayment identified in advance.
Athletics should remain self-supporting over time, but that does not require financial separation from the university. A university balance sheet can bridge a temporary shortfall or finance a long-lived asset if repayment responsibility and any subsidy are explicit. The new player market makes that broader financial capacity more valuable even when Athletics remains self-supporting.
Wisconsin rebuilt football once before by changing more than the roster. Beginning in 1990, Chancellor Donna Shalala backed a new direction, Athletic Director Pat Richter rebuilt Athletics, and head coach Barry Alvarez rebuilt football.
A competitive roster is necessary. But Wisconsin’s last great football rebuild succeeded because the institution around the roster changed too. This one will require the same thing.