New Wisconsin athletic director Shawn Eichorst, who spent the last eight years at Texas, believes his new and old schools have much in common.

Both are well-regarded research universities in state capitals that belong to major conferences and have relatively similar enrollments.

He also pointed out one difference.

“There’s swag at Texas, right?” Eichorst said Tuesday during his introductory news conference. “There’s 30 million people in Texas. We’ve got swag, too, but we have a little humility with that deal. We need to get our shoulders up. We need to feel good about what it is that we’re doing.”

Wisconsin could gain more of that Texas swagger if its football program gets back to winning the way it did the last time Eichorst was employed in Madison. Eichorst, who most recently worked as a deputy athletic director at Texas, received a five-year deal worth $1.6 million annually, with provisions for increases and incentives. He was hired 2½ months after Chris McIntosh left to become the Big Ten’s deputy commissioner for strategy.

Eichorst worked at Wisconsin from 2006-11 when Barry Alvarez was AD and Bret Bielema was leading the football program. He followed that up with stints as an athletic director at Miami (2011-12) and Nebraska (2012-17) before Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte hired him in 2018.

He returns to Wisconsin with the Badgers coming off back-to-back losing seasons in football, a notable fall for a program that had 22 straight winning seasons from 2002-23. Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell has gone 17-21 after posting a 53-10 record with one College Football Playoff appearance in his last five years at Cincinnati.

Eichorst hasn’t worked with Fickell before but said he’s encouraged by their initial conversations.

“Obviously he’s won every place he’s been,” Eichorst said. “My expectation is more of me than him, meaning I need to pour into him, learn more about his program, how he has things set up, how his athletes are taken care of, how we’re supporting that endeavor. And then we can figure out, as we move along, what that might look like.”

Football struggles led to Eichorst’s downfall the last time he was an athletic director.

He fired Nebraska coach Bo Pelini in 2014 and hired Mike Riley, who had gone 93-80 in 14 seasons at Oregon State. Eichorst was dismissed shortly after Nebraska suffered an early-season loss to Northern Illinois in 2017. Riley was fired at the end of that season after going 19-19 in three years.

When Eichorst’s hiring was announced last week, he spoke about how much he had grown from that Nebraska stint. Wisconsin interim chancellor Eric Wilcots led the search and has emphasized Eichorst’s accomplishments at Texas, which has won the Learfield Directors’ Cup all-sports standings five times in the last six years.

Texas ranked anywhere from fifth to ninth in the Directors’ Cup standings in the five years before Wilcots’ arrival. Texas’ football team went a combined 23-27 from 2014-17 but has made two College Football Playoff appearances in the last three years.

“Everybody looks at the end result of what we did at Texas,” Eichorst said. “When we got there in 2018, we weren’t very good in a lot of areas. And that didn’t change overnight.”

Eichorst said one thing that has caught his attention about Wisconsin is the overall quality of its head coaches.

“You’re going to be as good as your coaches,” Eichorst said. “That’s it. If you have an elite group of coaches who are working together and uniting and galvanizing and learning from one another and taking it out to their individual programs, I think you can start to build something special. I go back to Texas. We built a room of really elite head coaches and put them at the top of everything we did to help guide us.”

Eichorst said this job is particularly important to him because of his Wisconsin roots. He was born in Lone Rock, about 45 miles northwest of the Madison campus.

He treasured his previous stint at Wisconsin and says he believes this school “represents everything that is great about higher education and college athletics.”

“Nobody will work harder for Wisconsin athletics,” Eichorst said. “I love this state, and I love everything that it represents. The passion is there. You can see it. I don’t have to make it up. I’ve lived it. It’s in my heart.”

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

Chickens and geese that went missing from a local nonprofit’s Detroit site were found in the backyard of a nearby home, the director of operations said Wednesday.

The Full Circle Foundation, a Grosse Point Park-based nonprofit, said more than a dozen chickens and geese were believed stolen from a chicken coop on Detroit’s east side that also features the Full Circle Edible Garden.

The nonprofit provides training and job opportunities for young people with special needs.

Neighbors who learned from news reports about the missing flock found the “chickens were being held in the backyard of a vacant home not far from the Full Circle Edible Garden,” said Stephanie DiVirgil, director of operations. She said Ribbon Farm 4-H owns the flock.

“The homeowner was contacted, and she reached out to Full Circle to confirm,” said DiVirgil. “We were able to retrieve all of the chickens and geese that were found on the property, 19 in total.”

The foundation and Ribbon Farms 4-H are working to secure the site, including cameras, fencing and lights.

“We will likely start a fundraising campaign to have these items installed,” DiVirgil said. “We’ve gotten amazing support from the community, including offers to help pay for these additional security measures.”

Milwaukee community members gathered at pop-up events across the northwest side Wednesday as part of “Peace on Every Block,” a week of activities aimed at building community, mentorship and sharing resources for violence prevention.

The week is organized by Advance Peace Milwaukee, Milwaukee Community Cross Roads and Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services.

“We want to see everybody win, and that’s the whole theme about it, about healing, coming together, stopping the violence,” Desilynn Smith of Uniting Garden Homes said.

Lorenzo Davis of Advance Peace said the northwest side was a deliberate focus for the effort.

“Because this is where the gun violence is happening, and we’re trying to end the gun violence in the city of Milwaukee. We really want to do what’s best for Milwaukee,” Davis said.

The Milwaukee Police Department reported a 30 percent drop in homicides during the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year. But community members say that progress doesn’t always reflect what people are experiencing on the ground.

Watch: ‘Peace on Every Block’ brings Milwaukee community together to fight gun violence

‘Peace on Every Block’ brings Milwaukee community together to fight gun violence

“The data doesn’t lie, that’s true, but when it’s like every day we’re hearing about a shooting, or we’re so connected to it, and so many people connected to it, it just doesn’t appear that way,” Smith said.

The events come as Milwaukee has seen several violent deaths in recent days. 42-year-old Kristy Syed was found shot to death on Milwaukee’s south side.

The Medical Examiner’s Office also identified 19-year-old Savannah Lynn, who was killed after gunfire broke out following a fight on the Fourth of July.

Nine-year-old Jade Riser died after a shooting that happened near East Burleigh Street last Thursday.

Smith said healing is central to any lasting change.

“If we don’t heal, we can’t stop anything, because violence is actually the secondary emotion that is really driven off a lot of pain,” Smith said.

Davis said the young people in these neighborhoods are ready for something better.

“They want to see a better inside Milwaukee. They want to see a better chance for Milwaukee, and they want to do something better for themselves. So, these kids out here, we promote peace with them, and we’re going to back them, and we want to see them win,” Davis said.

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