MADISON — Less than four months ago, Wisconsin wasn’t a destination for wide receivers. The Badgers’ reputation was known far and wide as a run-first, pro-style team that didn’t focus on their pass-catchers enough to develop them into pro prospects.

Now, Wisconsin appears to have one of its deepest receiver cores ever, in part because Luke Fickell and wide receivers coach Mike Brown mined the transfer portal, flipping the narrative on its head and making Madison a destination for wide outs.

“I feel like that’s one of the things people don’t understand about Wisconsin,” Cincinnati transfer receiver Will Pauling said. “The receivers are really good.”

With four new receivers on the roster by way of the transfer portal, including two from Cincinnati - Pauling and Quincy Burroughs - the Badgers have no shortage of options to throw the football to.

Four days into the new year, Fickell officially hired Brown to coach his wide outs. Brown was an All-American at Liberty before spending three seasons in the NFL. Most recently, he was the receivers coach and passing game coordinator at Cincinnati, where he developed players like current Indianapolis Colt Alec Pierce and soon-to-be professional receiver Tre Tucker. Perhaps most importantly for Wisconsin’s purposes, however, Brown also recruited and coached Pauling and Burroughs.

Six days after Brown’s hire was officially announced, Pauling announced his commitment to Madison. The next day, his former teammate Burroughs followed suit. It’s safe to say Brown was instrumental in luring the two former Bearcats to Madison.

“Coach Brown was probably the No. 1 reason I came here,” Pauling said. “Coach Brown has always been a person that’s honest with me. Ever since I was a sophomore in high school, he’s told me what it was and told me what it wasn’t. He’s kept it 100 with me throughout our whole relationship, so that was probably the biggest reason for me to come here.”

“Honestly, in college football, you don’t find those types of relationships every day.”

Burroughs couldn’t agree more.

“(He was a) pretty big factor,” the receiver said. “You know, coming out of high school, I wasn’t the most highly-recruited guy, I knew I could play at a high level. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have offers, I had a few offers.

“He was someone who believed in me first.”

At Cincinnati, Brown didn’t have the allure of a major college football program up his sleeve as a recruiter. He had to identify and develop talent that was overlooked, in many cases, by household programs.

Pierce was a low three star recruit out of Illinois. After being selected in the second round, Pierce put up 41 catches for 593 yards and two touchdowns as a rookie with the Colts. The Brown protégé appears to have an extremely bright future.

Tucker was also a low three-star recruit. He had offers from a litany of MAC schools, but ultimately elected to sign with the Bearcats in 2018. After putting up 111 catches and 1,426 yards at Cincinnati, getting better with every year, Tucker is expected to be a day three selection in the 2023 NFL draft.

“He’s a great coach, he does a great job developing guys,” Burroughs said. “I think that’s just the biggest thing, he develops guys at a high level. He’s very personable, someone that you can depend and rely on.

“I trust him a lot with my future.”

The developmental aspect of Brown’s coaching style is very important to receivers like Burroughs and Pauling, who came to Cincinnati far from finished products.

“He was working with me at the previous school, helping develop my game a lot. I had some habits I needed to break and he allowed me to break those,” Burroughs continued. “I had a natural-given ability that he just helped me kinda take to the next level and work on little things that would make me a greater player in the long run.”

“That’s probably the best thing about Coach Brown,” Pauling agreed. “Guys like Alec Pierce, Tre Tucker, Tyler Scott, the guys that I played with at Cincinnati. I saw where they were, and what Coach Brown did for them.”

For Burroughs and Pauling, the decision to come to Madison wasn’t just about Brown. It had a lot to do with their own personal relationship.

Pauling is a year deeper into college than Burroughs. When the latter visited Cincinnati for his official recruiting visit, Pauling was his host. Now, the two are roommates in Madison.

“He's always been like a big bro to me in some facet,” Burroughs said of Pauling. “I learn a lot of things from him, sometimes I have the chance to teach him some of the things I know.”

“I feel like me and Quincy, we were a little more on the same page because we already had that relationship with Coach Brown,” Pauling said. “So we knew what Coach Brown was about, Coach Fickell, Coach Brady (Collins), so we had a lot more familiar faces here.”

The two have been on the same page since their Cincinnati days, and it’s no coincidence that they committed just a day apart. During their recruitment in the transfer portal, the ex-Bearcats were in constant communication with each other.

“Truthfully, everyday,” Burroughs said. “It was everyday, we were on the phone having conversations about it. I’d call him, get off the phone with him and get to thinking myself. A lot of prayer, talking to my family. But I talked to Will every day about the decision, not gonna lie.”

“I think it was a lot easier to know you were going in with somebody else,” Burroughs continued. “And not necessarily him making the decision for me, but knowing that we kinda share interests and share beliefs.”

Even with a familiar head coach, position coach and strength staff, the transition to Madison wasn’t smooth sailing, particularly for the Florida-born Burroughs.

“It’s definitely an adjustment, I’m not gonna lie,” he admitted. “Coming from Florida, Florida weather, it was an adjustment at Cincinnati, and coming here, it didn’t snow as much there and here it’s snowing like every day. I think it got to the negatives my first week here, which was crazy.”

But once again, Burroughs found solace in knowing that he put his future in good hands with Brown.

“A lot of people say, why didn’t you stay in Florida, why didn’t you play football in the south, and the biggest thing is relationships. School really doesn’t matter if you don’t have a relationship with the people there.”

For the Illinois native Pauling, the climate was less of an adjustment. Still, he, too, had to settle in to his new team and city.

“At Cincinnati, I had a close group of friends that I was always around, so that was probably my biggest thing… I was unfamiliar with my teammates so I had to find my group of guys that I’d always be around when I’m not at practice or in the locker room. So once I found that group within the team I felt a lot more comfortable out here.”

Now, Burroughs and Pauling are firmly enculturated into the Badgers’ program, and figure to both be contributors in what promises to be a dynamic receiver room. Burroughs has flashed this spring, but Pauling in particular has put himself in a great position to start this fall.

“At Cincinnati, he was easily one of the better receivers on our team, he just had an older guy in front of him who was really good,” Burroughs said of his roommate. “I’ve always seen his potential…he was always a baller.”

Not to take away from the incumbent receivers, Burroughs also praised the guys who have been in the room well before Wisconsin became a hot destination in the portal.

“These guys can play at a very high level. You come in and you bring guys in and it’s like, ‘oh, these transfers are gonna take over.’ No. These guys came here to compete as well. We have a lot of depth, it’ll be big time for years to come.”

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