Translation: I, Chris McIntosh, have convinced the school's administration that the problem is not the coach, who has been unable to define what he wants this football program to look like in the last three years, and who has led the program to historically poor results, getting worse with each season that he is at the helm. Particularly given that I fired the second most successful coach of the last century to hire the present guy, it is very important to me that you, the students, alumni, fans, and most importantly boosters--and the administration--understand that I will stick by this failure for at least a while longer. In honor of that, we are committed to blaming the program's investment during these admittedly turbulent times in college sports. It is not Coach Fickell's fault--nor is it mine (even though I run the department that I now claim has not adequately invested in the program). So write off this failure of a season, don't look too closely at the 2-10 record. Please keep coming to the games because the tailgates remain fun--and a good place to talk about how terrible the program is (you've already paid for the tickets, might as well make use of them). Please don't boo the players, it isn't their fault [that's true, this is on the coaching staff and administration]. And please understand that rather than making the obvious choice to fire this head coach, I've convinced everyone to instead spend that approximately [edit] $2M a year that we would save by canning this disaster (we would need that to pay the next coach, anyway), on buying players on the open market. I'm sure they will want to come to Wisconsin to participate in the great turnaround that we have in the works. Trust me, it's going to be amazing...
...
or I'm out of a job.
And guess what, next season's schedule looks a lot easier, so please don't be too upset when Notre Dame humiliates us at Lambeau Field--none of you care about that, right? Lambeau isn't a big deal in the Wisconsin sports fans' minds? And when USC humiliates us at home, and Iowa humiliates us--again--in Iowa City, and Penn State humiliates us in Happy Valley. We have legitimate 50/50 shots hosting Michigan State and Rutgers, and away at Maryland (please let it be in October), and UCLA (please let it be in September), and Purdue. Which all means that the game for Paul Bunyan's Axe will be the most exciting in a while because we might have a shot to make it back to .500 and a bowl! How exciting will that be!?! You see, progress! That will prove that this was a good decision all along.
