PHOENIX — Jim Leonhard was spending some quality time with his family, away from a mass of bodies watching the Guaranteed Rate Bowl trophy presentation, when he was asked to come up on stage by Luke Fickell.
It was a moment that had the potential to be awkward: The relatively new coach for the University of Wisconsin football team — Fickell was hired exactly a month earlier — requesting the presence of the man who’d been passed over for that same position. Standing near Fickell as he extended the invitation to Leonhard was UW athletic director Chris McIntosh, the man who’d made the decision to hire an outsider instead of the program legend hoping to land his dream job.