There have been moments. We thought going into 2010 and 2011 that we would have pretty good teams. The date with Ohio State in 2010 had been circled for a long time. And Russell Wilson gave us hope in 2011. But we generally have a healthy dose of skepticism. And as Badge said, last year was a good example of that. There was a lot of hype, but whenever that happens, we start to get nervous. Real nervous. Especially when the injuries start piling up in the pre-season.
It's different than the programs that lived in the AP for the first 70 years of its existence, e.g., Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, and Nebraska. Those programs expect to be good, so when there is hype, they often buy into it more and more. To a Michigan fan, there is no reason it shouldn't be in the CFP playoff conversation. And Nebraska fans still know and feel the Devaney/Osborne era. It's what Nebraska is (or is supposed to be).
Wisconsin fans have a chip on their shoulder because we're still not sure if we belong in that company. 25 years into legitimate success, we've still had enough reminders of the Badgers' fallibility to worry about Icarus's wings. We'll stick to our belligerent, lunch pail view of our place in the college football world.
My impression is that's reflective of the general Wisconsin idiom. The Badger State isn't Illinois, Michigan, or Ohio. It's got things in common with those traditional, Midwestern, industrial powers, but Milwaukee isn't Chicago, and Racine isn't the suburbs of Detroit, cranking out America's industry; Wisconsin is close, but not the same. There's a chip on the shoulder about that, and pride in it, too.
