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Nebraska Football: Former Husker staffer joins Wisconsin Badgers

By Oliver Vandervoort

LINCOLN, NE - APRIL 22: The mascots of the Nebraska Cornhuskers on the field before the game at Memorial Stadium on April 22, 2023 in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Photo by Steven Branscombe/Getty Images)
LINCOLN, NE - APRIL 22: The mascots of the Nebraska Cornhuskers on the field before the game at Memorial Stadium on April 22, 2023 in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Photo by Steven Branscombe/Getty Images) /
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The Nebraska football team is going to be going up against a former staffer who worked under Scott Frost when they take on the Wisconsin Badgers this year. Jack Cooper, who was with the Huskers for Frost’s first two years in Lincoln.

Cooper signed on with the new Badgers’ staff under Luke Fickell on Friday, marking a return to the FBS ranks after spending the last three years in the FCS. The real question is just why he chose to leave his coordinator job with the Rhode Island Rams to take on once again a position that won’t allow him to be a full-time on-field coach.

Cooper joins Wisconsin as a senior defensive analyst and will be lending what has been experience at several different stops during his career. The addition of Cooper gives Fickell’s staff one analyst for offense, defense and special teams; two graduate assistants for the offense; one graduate assistant for the defense; and a quality control coach for the offense.

It’s been an interesting run of twists and turns for Cooper over the course of his coaching career. Before joining the Nebraska football team, he started his career in 2013 at Salve Regina. He coaches the defensive backs at that location.

Cooper then moved to Southern Connecticut State to coach defensive backs, special teams and be their recruiting coordinator in 2014. He was an analyst at Yale in 2015 and then moved to UCF where he struck up a friendship with former Nebraska football head coach Scott Frost.

He then joined the Nebraska football staff when Frost was hired as the Huskers’ head coach in 2018 and was there until 2019. He then took the defensive coordinator job at Rhode Island and has been there for the last three seasons.

The good news about Wisconsin hiring this former Nebraska football staffer is that there isn’t much “inside intel” he’ll be able to share with Fickell. Frost is gone, and most of the players Cooper would have worked with are also gone. But seeing the Huskers match up against Wisconsin this fall is always interesting.

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