It’s no secret, nor is it up for debate, that when Wisconsin wanted to rebuild its football identity, it worked hard to copy Nebraska. Longtime Badgers athletic director and legend Barry Alvarez admitted as much many years ago. But as Switch said in the original Matrix movie, “not like this … not like this.”
Wisconsin shouldn’t be trying to become the worst Nebraska teams in the program’s history. And yet, with the presumed hiring of Shawn Eichorst as its new athletic director, the Huskers’ Big Ten rival seems destined to go further down that road.
It wasn’t enough to hire Luke Fickell as the Scott Frost of Wisconsin. The Group of 6 coach who is simply in over his head when trying to run a Power 4 program. This time they decided they didn’t want to hire the equivalent of a failed member of the Nebraska football program. This time they wanted the exact guy that helped guide the program into failure. It’s a truly baffling hire, even if Eichorst has presumably rebuilt his reputation a bit at Texas. Worth noting he did that when he was decidedly not “the man” making the big decisions.
It’s not hard to understand why Wisconsin fans think Eichorst is a good hire. He was, after all, a deputy under Alvarez. That’s likely one of the reasons why Nebraska took a flyer on him when he’d only led an athletic department for two years before coming to Lincoln (Miami in 2011 & 2012). He was green when he took over the Cornhuskers. He made everyone in the state green with envy of the programs led by competent leadership during his five-year tenure here.
Sources: Wisconsin is targeting Shawn Eichorst as the school’s new athletic director. He’s the former AD at Nebraska and Miami and is currently the deputy AD and COO at Texas. pic.twitter.com/NdfF86DeOd
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) June 30, 2026
Shawn Eichorst’s Nebraska football tenure should worry Wisconsin fans
Eichorst’s first move was to fire Bo Pelini, a coach who certainly had his flaws. A coach whose program had started moving in the wrong direction, but also a coach who never won fewer than nine games with the Huskers. Then the new AD turned around and hired Mike Riley as Pelini’s replacement. Riley was someone who certainly did more with less at Oregon State, but the minute he was hired, there were concerns that he didn’t know how to run a program at Nebraska's level.
Those concerns were justified when Riley was fired by Eichorst’s successor four years later. But he wasn’t fired before he was forced to can his longtime best friend and defensive coordinator Mark Banker before that final campaign. Eichorst also forced Riley to hire Bob Diaco as his replacement. Riley and Diaco didn’t know each other at all, but the Husker AD at the time once told a room of boosters that Diaco was “the best coach on campus.” Keep in mind, Hall of Fame volleyball coach John Cook was on campus at the time.
“The best coach on campus” then put together a defense that allowed 35 or more points seven times in the 2017 season. More than half the Huskers’ games. Diaco’s unit allowed 36 points in NU’s opener that season … to Arkansas State. They followed that up with a 42-35 loss to Oregon. They followed that up with a 21-17 loss to Northern Illinois. Bob Diaco’s defense held exactly one opponent to less than 14 points.
Eichorst was fired not long after Nebraska started that dreadful season, and, after the fact, Diaco, the man whom Eichorst had mandated Riley hire, claimed that Eichorst had “mandated” a tackling approach under Banker that made the Huskers’ defense worse at tackling.
You read that right. Nebraska’s defensive coordinator blamed its poor defense on the athletic director. That’s the kind of poisoned atmosphere Wisconsin is going out of its way to bring in.
In the process, Wisconsin continues to follow in Nebraska’s footsteps. Even if they’re doing so without really understanding what they’re doing.
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