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I'll disagree with my fellow Badgers and say nine wins.

Nine wins means you're most likely a good team. It's a strong season most any of the time. It's winning just shy of 70 percent of your games. To me, eight wins is satisfactory, nine is good, 10 or more is quite good. Perhaps we're splitting hairs on the meaning of good.

I've been lucky enough to see 12 9-win years in the 15 seasons since I reached campus. Some I reacted to better than others. Some meant getting to 9 in 9-10 games, others in 13. All had moments of highs that satisfied and lows that created angst. 

I get that some will say the common occurrence makes it less special, but I always try to take the long view. This is Wisconsin, a school in a small, bad-weather state that doesn't produce a ton of talent. But why right does that program expect 9 wins a year, but for the fact it keeps putting in the work and doing the right things to make it happen? 

Beyond that, I consume college football because it brings me joy along with all the angst, in-game stress and yelling. If I raise my standard for joy, it doesn't push the program to greater heights. It only affects how I feel about it. And again, I'm here to enjoy. 

My K-State fan friends seemed to very much enjoy the Snyder days

For Huskers fans, the 70's, 80's, & 90's were full of all the angst, in-game stress and yelling, yearning for that mythical title that came with a crystal football

while it was obviously stressful and most seasons ended in disappointment, it was much more fun than struggling to get to a bowl invitation

Nicely put, I have pondered whether it would be more fun to be a fan of a team with modest expectations.  I went to an Ole Miss game a few years back and they explained to me how they had fun win or lose (and they indeed did), and a Bama fan was at that particular tailgate and she explained that Bama fans almost never have fun because they are so stressed about not only winning, but winning BIG.

If I could choose, I'd have been a Kansas State fan back in the Snyder days.  A bowl game was a good year. 

I find there's some of this dichotomy between being a fan of Purdue football and Purdue basketball. 

In football, we know we're a low-end P5 team. We know our recruiting is, at best, mid-tier B1G on a good year. We celebrated our 2019 class, ranked 25th in the nation and 4th in the B1G, like it was the best class Purdue had ever signed, because it is pretty close to being that. A mid-tier bowl game is a good year, and all rational fans recognize that. Going to a Rose Bowl is a generational treat. 

In basketball, the stakes and the expectations are SO much higher. We expect to be competitive in recruiting battles with every team not named Kentucky, Duke, or UNC. That means we don't think we should be losing recruits to MSU or IU, either. We expect to be in the B1G championship race yearly. We expect to be like the Bo Ryan Wisconsin years, where finishing outside the top 4 in the conference is cause for concern. We expect that making the tournament is a minimally acceptable year, but a "good" year is a top 4 seed in the tournament and a Sweet 16 or better. 

Fans are thankful for the AD opening up the pocketbook for Brohm, and would be willing to build statues for coaches like Joe Tiller. Some fans, at least up until last year, were ambivalent about whether Painter should be retained because they claimed his "ceiling" was the Sweet 16 and were generally termed the "demand better" crowd because they thought Painter would never reach the "next level". 

I'd say being a Georgia fan is similar, except that I honestly think most SEC programs don't give a damn about their basketball teams. For the SEC, it's all football all the time unless you're Kentucky [and maybe Florida?]. I think most SEC basketball fans, if your team is making the tournament at a regular clip, are plenty happy with basketball. 

Bowl is the minimum expectation. I think most years for me finishing ranked constitutes a good year for WVU.

Last year may have been the rare exception to that.