Brian Posick hasn’t forgotten his first Madison Sports Hall of Fame banquet. It was 30 years ago, and the memory is still fresh.
Former University of Wisconsin sports information director Jim Mott was among the four inductees in 1996, and Posick was drawn to the event because “I admired him.”
Posick was subsequently hooked. “I wanted to see what it was all about,” he said, “and I’ve been there ever since handing out individual awards, whatever they may be.”
This topic, admittedly, is well down the list of ways the transfer portal complicates college sports.
But it’s on there somewhere and entered my mind last week when the UW Athletic Hall of Fame class of 2026 was unveiled.
Former University of Wisconsin men’s basketball forward Sam Dekker decided to enter coaching after an 11-year professional basketball career, joining the South Carolina men’s basketball staff in May.
Last week, he discussed the excitement of joining his former assistant coach at Wisconsin, Lamont Paris, and the difficulty of leaving the playing chapter of his career behind him.
In their latest attempt to get the program back on track, the Wisconsin Badgersannounced the football program’s next general manager.
According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Wisconsin hired longtime NFL personnel executive Morocco Brown.
When Julian Walters was playing professional basketball in Europe, he thought he had the next decade of his life planned out. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and his career abruptly came to a halt.
“You have this idea in your head of how your life is going to go,” he said. “I wasn’t quite ready to not play basketball yet.”
University of Wisconsin Interim Director of Athletics Marcus Sedberry announced Thursday that 12 standout athletes and staff members will be inducted into the UW Athletic Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2026.
Sedberry revealed the class inside Victory Hall at Camp Randall Stadium. The group will be inducted during Hall of Fame weekend on Sept. 18-19, and will be honored at Camp Randall during Wisconsin football’s game vs. Eastern Michigan on Sept. 19 (11:30 a.m. CT).
Speaking Thursday morning to a meeting of downtown business leaders, UW-Madison interim athletic director Marcus Sedberry said he anticipates the new director will be named before the Badgers football season begins in September.
“My estimation is before football season, there will be some type of announcement of who the next athletic director will be,” Sedberry said at a Downtown Madison Inc. breakfast event held at the Edgewater Hotel.
It’s one thing that a national college football preseason magazine has University of Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell on its “hot seat” list.
It’s another thing for Fickell’s fourth-year program to be the target of a “hot take” from an anonymous opposing Big Ten assistant coach in the same magazine.
The search for the next University of Wisconsin athletic director has a focus on candidates with experience of what they could be stepping into.
The two-week application period for the position opened Wednesday after a series of listening sessions and the start of meetings by a nine-member search committee, the school said. Applications are due by June 10.
UW-Madison Athletics announced Tuesday that six Badger programs earned perfect multi-year scores in the NCAA’s most recent Academic Progress Rate report.
The teams that achieved flawless multi-year APR scores of 1,000 were men’s golf, women’s golf, men’s cross country, women’s cross country, men’s track & field and men’s wrestling.
The search to replace Chris McIntosh as the new University of Wisconsin athletic director commenced nearly two weeks ago. The university recently gave some answers as to the process, but there’s still plenty to wonder about what’s ahead and who could fill this prominent role.
To get around these days, Pat Richter has been using a cane, a concession to the toll on his 84-year-old hips and knees from playing football.
But he has taken it all in stride.
Even if that stride, in his words, has been reduced to “slow but sure” steps.
Some would suggest that’s the approach the University of Wisconsin should take in hiring its next athletic director, a title Richter once held for 14-plus years.
A sign of our crazy times: It wasn’t even noteworthy when we learned during the bruhaha over the firing of Jay Rothman, the president of the Universities of Wisconsin, that the position’s market value is millions of dollars below that of a good college basketball player.
To get around these days, Pat Richter has been using a cane, a concession to the toll on his 84-year-old hips and knees from playing football.
But he has taken it all in stride.
Even if that stride, in his words, has been reduced to “slow but sure” steps.
UW-Madison has officially launched a search for its next director of athletics.
Incoming Interim Chancellor Eric Wilcots is leading the search process after outgoing Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin asked him to take charge, given her time as chancellor ends May 16.
“Wisconsin Athletics plays a vital role in the life of our campus and our community; its success matters,” Wilcots said in a statement issued Tuesday.
UW-Madison on Tuesday announced the launch of its search for a next director of athletics, with a search committee including the Indianapolis Colts’ general manager.
Outgoing Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin asked interim Chancellor Eric Wilcots to take the lead on the search process, given that her time as chancellor concludes on Saturday. The new athletics director is expected to begin their role this summer.
Marcus Sedberry could be Wisconsin’s interim athletic director for a while – or not so long.
UW has yet to announce a search firm, search committee or other important details in the three-plus weeks since Chris McIntosh’s abrupt departure to take a position at the Big Ten office.
The process of finding a new athletic director at the University of Wisconsin already is different than the last one.
There was one day between the announcement of Barry Alvarez’s pending retirement in 2021 and the naming of a nine-person search committee to help find his replacement, complete with a website that featured an eight-page prospectus document.
The chancellor is leaving.
The president got fired.
The athletic director jumped before he could be pushed.
That’s a lot of turnover at the top for UW-Madison and the 13-campus Universities of Wisconsin. It’s also an opportunity to reset priorities for higher education in Madison and across the state. The Regents and others who will help fill these jobs need to get this right.
Members of the Wisconsin women’s hockey team brought their NCAA Championship trophy to the American Family Children’s Hospital on Friday afternoon.
This visit is part of Badger Fridays, during which UW athletes from various sports visit patients at American Family Children’s Hospital.
The Wisconsin Badgers are in a relatively rare position.
For just the third time in more than three decades, UW will be hiring a new athletic director.
Chris McIntosh left earlier in April to take a new position with the Big Ten as its deputy commissioner for strategy. Marcus Sedberry will serve as interim athletic director during the national search.
Marcus Sedberry is getting a pay raise to serve as interim athletic director at the University of Wisconsin.
Sedberry will have an annual base salary of $875,000 for the temporary role, according to an offer letter from UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin dated April 12. That was the same day Chris McIntosh submitted a resignation letteras he left the school to take a job as deputy commissioner of strategy at the Big Ten Conference.
Mick Byrne made it clear his impending retirement was not a revelation. Instead, some alarms went off for the University of Wisconsin cross country and track coach.
In late November, a handful of days after the NCAA men’s and women’s cross-country championships, Byrne had triple bypass heart surgery.
In a seismic shakeup at the top of the Wisconsin athletics department, athletic director Chris McIntosh recently announced his departure from the role to join the Big Ten conference in an administrative capacity.
Wisconsin legend Barry Alvarez was just as surprised as anybody.
Marcus Sedberry’s grown used to being pulled in many directions.
He enjoys that each day of his career as a University of Wisconsin administrator throws new challenges his way. The biggest curveball of his tenure in Madison came over the past week when Sedberry learned his job was about to change entirely.
It was Marcus Sedberry’s first public meeting as interim athletic director of the University of Wisconsin.
But Wednesday’s Athletic Board meeting was a farewell, too: UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin delivered her final address to the group that’s tasked with oversight of the athletic department.
The University of Wisconsin athletic department is budgeting for around $2 million less in football ticket revenue for the 2026 season than it earned in 2025.
That was one of the takeaways from a department budget request, approved Wednesday by the Athletic Board, that exceeded $200 million for the first time.
Chris McIntosh said he had “very mixed emotions” in resigning from the University of Wisconsin athletic director position.
McIntosh emailed UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and her chief of staff and senior adviser Jennifer Noyes a four-paragraph resignation message Sunday night.
Mick Byrne had a lot to live up to when he arrived at the University of Wisconsin in 2008.
Byrne took over a Badgers men’s cross country program that had won nine straight Big Ten championships and had each of its previous three coaches bring home an NCAA championship.
There’s no definitive timeline yet on the search for a new University of Wisconsin athletic director.
Chris McIntosh’s departure to become deputy commissioner for strategy at the Big Ten Conference was kept quiet until Sunday. The conference and Wisconsin confirmed it with a Monday morning announcement.
Wisconsin hockey is leaving Las Vegas without the national championship trophy after falling to Denver 2-1 in the title game on April 11.
The Badgers dominated the shots on goal but after a first-period goal they couldn’t find the back of the net again, while Denver’s two third-period goals lifted the Pioneers to their 11th national championship and third in the last five years.
Wisconsin AD Chris McIntosh is slated to resign from his position immediately and join the Big Ten as its newly created deputy commissioner for strategy, SBJ has learned. McIntosh will report directly to Commissioner Tony Petitti, while his role will focus on shaping the broad strategy of the league. Wisconsin Deputy AD/COO Marcus Sedberry is likely to be named interim AD, sources told SBJ, though immediate succession plans are fluid. McIntosh was in Las Vegas over the weekend for UW men’s hockey’s Frozen Four appearance and flew back to Madison on Sunday. The Badgers lost 2-1 to Denver in the national title game on Saturday night.
This season has provided moments where the University of Wisconsin men’s hockey team showed it could be a Frozen Four team and others where it appeared the Badgers could miss the NCAA Tournament altogether.
The detailed, energetic Badgers team that took the ice Thursday carried it into the national championship game.
Governor Tony Evers signed a bill Wednesday that gave the University of Wisconsin athletic department financial cushion in the form of tax dollars to service debt, and codified the university’s rules surrounding name, image, and likeness payments to athletes into law.
After her 122nd and final game for the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team, dynamo point guard Ronnie Porter fielded a question on her legacy.
The Badgers had just lost 67-50 to Columbia in Monday’s semifinals of the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT) at Koch Arena in Wichita, Kansas.
UW-Madison’s women’s sports teams will soon have some extra branding on their jerseys.
UW Health on Thursday announced it would become the official jersey patch sponsor for the Badgers women’s squads. The healthcare provider’s logo will appear on basketball, volleyball, hockey and softball uniforms beginning with the 2026-27 season.
Wisconsin Football announced the death of Jack Pugh, a former football player who graduated from UW-Madison in 2025.
In a recent post from Wisconsin Football on Facebook, they remember him as a positive and genuine light who cared about people.
The University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team forced six Columbia turnovers in a row to fuel a run in the fourth quarter to shrink its deficit to eight points with nearly seven minutes left.
But the Badgers’ surge was short-lived. The Lions went on a run of their own to pull ahead by double digits once more.
People with sensitive ears might have had trouble with some of the things Luke Osburn said when he got back to the bench at one point in Saturday’s University of Wisconsin men’s game.
Coach Mike Hastings said he was glad there weren’t microphones in that area.
“Let’s just say he wasn’t politically correct,” Hastings said.
Wisconsin women’s basketball is off to its first postseason tournament semifinal since 2007, according to UW Athletics.
The Badgers staged a furious comeback in the final minute of regulation to force overtime, then defeated Harvard 64-61 in the extra period.
On Sunday, Wisconsin (34-2-1) won 3-2 against top-seeded Ohio State in the NCAA Frozen Four tournament.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Badgers took an early lead in the first period and maintained a two goal lead for a majority of the game. Forward Kelly Gorbatenko scored first, followed by defender Laney Potter. That is until the third period, when Ohio State made up for lost time with two goals.
It would have been out of character for Nick Boyd to appear dejected.
The fifth-year guard’s college career had just ended, the No. 5 seed University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team falling in stunning fashion, 83-82, to No. 12 seed High Point in the NCAA Tournament’s First Round on Thursday in the Moda Center. But Boyd said the moment doesn’t define his career. Even if it was his layup at the rim that was blocked with four seconds left, which ended up being Wisconsin’s last chance at avoiding an upset loss.
It’s not difficult to know whose building the University of Wisconsin women’s hockey team is in for the Frozen Four.
Most of the Penn State branding inside Pegula Ice Arena has been covered with NCAA or Frozen Four logos but the giant “Welcome to Hockey Valley” lettering and Penn State banners still hang over the rink.
Morning workouts. Skills training. The weight room. Watching game tape. They’re all part of the program for college athletes.
University of Wisconsin-Madison athletes have one more item on their training list: meditation.
Chad McGehee tells athletes that meditation is “strength and conditioning for the mind.”
Taxpayers in Wisconsin could soon be putting more money towards UW-Madison.
A bill would make taxpayers pay for UW Athletic facilities freeing up money for NIL deals for student-athletes.
Gov. Tony Evers will decide if the NIL bill becomes a law or not and he stated that he supports the goal of this bill.
Wisconsin residents spoke out on how they felt about the bill.
“I think our taxes should be going to other things, especially since they’re so high.” said resident Sufiyah Siddique.
In a rare moment of drama in the Senate Tuesday, a bill that would give the UW-Madison athletics department millions to pay down debt and free up other money for revenue-sharing with players passed by a single vote that changed just as the legislation appeared doomed.
The Wisconsin Badgers are one step closer to receiving taxpayer support as they adapt to the changing college sports landscape.
With a one-vote margin, the state Senate on March 17 approved a bill to provide taxpayer funding for athletic facility debt service and formalize rules around name, image and likeness. Eleven Republicans and six Democrats voted in favor of the bill, while seven Republicans and nine Democrats voted against it.
Following the sports and money theme, the Senate will also consider a bill that would give more than $14 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for athletic facility costs in order to offset the money the school pays student athletes in NIL deals.
Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh remains optimistic about the outlook of proposed legislation that would provide taxpayer support for athletic facility debt service and codify rules around name, image and likeness.
“I think there’s a tremendous amount of receptivity to the bill and what’s in the bill,” McIntosh said.
One of the groups experiencing the “Wild West” of current college athletics wants even less oversight.
Big Ten Conference leaders want the NCAA to pause investigations and possible punishments against teams for tampering with athletes around transfer portal windows, according to a letter sent by the Big Ten to the NCAA that was obtained Wednesday by ESPN. The conference, which includes the University of Wisconsin, believes the rules regarding contact with transfers can’t keep up with the rest of the changes made to the landscape of college sports.
Caroline Harvey’s mantel is stacked with awards.
The University of Wisconsin senior defender was recently named the most valuable player at the Olympics after helping Team USA win the gold medal. She also claimed player and defender of the year distinction in the WCHA.
Could the Patty Kazmaier Award be next?
The USA Hockey Foundation announced Wednesday, March 11 its three finalists for the 2026 award, which is given annually to the top women’s college hockey player. Harvey made the cut, as did fellow Olympians Abbey Murphy of Minnesota and Tessa Janecke of Penn State.
If Harvey wins it would mark the second time Badgers player won the award in consecutive years. Casey O’Brien was the winner last season. UW’s Meghan Duggan and Brianna Decker won in 2011 and ’12.
Wisconsin lawmakers moved closer to providing millions in taxpayer funding to help the University of Wisconsin-Madison athletics department compete in the evolving landscape of college sports name, image and likeness programs.
The Joint Finance Committee approved Bill 1034 on Wednesday afternoon in an 8-5 bipartisan vote, advancing legislation that would allocate $14.6 million to UW athletics. The bill could reach the Senate floor as soon as next week.
Wisconsin lawmakers are advancing a bill through the Senate that would place policies in statute and provide funding to help the University of Wisconsin navigate changes in college sports allowing student athletes to make money off their name, image and likeness (NIL).
The Legislature’s budget committee voted Wednesday to give more than $14 million a year to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for athletic facilities costs as the sports powerhouse pays student athletes for “name, image, likeness” deals, known as NIL.
But the vote on the GOP-led Joint Finance Committee suggests the legislation will require Democratic votes to get over the finish line in the Senate.
If state lawmakers don’t pass a college sports bill in the coming weeks, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s athletics department anticipates facing difficult financial decisions.
“Either we will need to reevaluate our expectations on the success of our sports, or we will need to reevaluate how they’re supported or how many of them exist,” Chris McIntosh, UW-Madison’s athletics director, said at a legislative hearing this month.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Athletic Hall of Fame will have a new, permanent home outside of the Kohl Center, according to a UW Athletics press release. Construction is set to begin early spring and be completed in time for the 2026 Hall class next September.
Wisconsin native JJ Watt will be forever enshrined in the place where he became an NFL superstar. Watt was named the first member of the Houston Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2026 Thursday, the Harris County Sports Authority announced.
Kelly Sheffield has a simple philosophy written on the walls of the Wisconsin volleyball locker room: When you’re at Wisconsin, championships are the expectation.
“We’re also trying to compete for championships. And we got that written downstairs in our locker room,” Sheffield said. “When you’re here at Wisconsin, that is the expectation, and that we’re all in it and it energizes all of us. We’re all in it together.”
On Wisconsin! University of Wisconsin-Madison announced the date of this year’s homecoming game on Tuesday. (video)
“It’s a huge problem,” UW-Madison journalism professor Katy Culver said about the sheer volume of artificial intelligence-fueled misinformation online. “It predates AI, but AI is making the information more believable for a lot of people.”
