My dudes, I haven't been here in ages. Honestly, American football--including CFB--has been fading for me as a pastime.
Last year I took the boy to see UW-Madison for the first time, and we did a football game. Ouch. Most embarassed I've ever been for the Badgers, seeing them get smacked around at home by Northwestern. I can live with a loss, and I can live with Alabama dominating the Badgers, but Northwestern, at home? Get me another beer. And the boy, because in Wisconsin you can be served as long as a parent is with you. How about that. The boy loved Madison.
Regardless, I'll always love the Badgers. So I'm reading something in the Athletic, or the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal yesterday--I don't even remember what--and I think to myself, "I wonder what the fellas are thinking back on the site." So--for the first time in forever that I have had anything substantive to say (I think I partictipated in one ranking last year, in early September) I strolled on over and I saw the heart post. That s#1+ sucks. Talked to Badge last night. Nothing more to say on that, except that it's always worth talking to your friends--and it's better to have friends who don't all see the world exactly the same way you do. Some meme-ish thing that CD put on Facebook the other day (another site I don't spend much time on): travel is the enemy of prejudice. We need more enemies of prejudice. Kinda related. Anyway, I digress.
Ok--so some football talk. First, this game is against USC, not Alabama. USC is good--better than they've been, probably, but not 2004 USC good. It is
always hard going all the way from the midwest to the west coast to play a game (and vice versa), and I don't think the Badgers will come out with a win. BUT...there's also a little extra doom and gloom after the butt kicking in Madison ten or eleven days ago.
Look, to stay in a game against a more talented team, you have to control the clock, limit the mistakes, and take advantage of some turnovers. Do that and you can keep things close. Do it enough, and you might just get the break you need to sneak in an upset. But if your qb goes down with a season ending injury on the first drive, your offensive line commits penalties that end scoring drives, and your running backs waste good, 20+ yard runs by ending them with fumbles, that more talented team is going to start rolling. And they did. And that better team is one of the king of kings. So, yeah, the Badgers got stomped, but let's not all jump to conclusions about the end of Badger football. Was it worse than how Colorado whupped up on the Badgers in '95? Or Syracuse in '97? Nope. That was under King Barry. Post first Rose Bowl. And how are those other two programs doing?
And yes, I've been disappointed with the results under Fickell so far. And no, the Badgers won't control the clock the way they used to with this offense. But I'm still proud of the way McIntosh put a stake in the ground when he fired Chryst and hired Fickell instead of Leonhard: "We are not content to be Iowa." Hell yeah. (I know he didn't actually say that, and I miss Leonhard--I wouldn't have been upset by that hire.) And if we go through a rough patch as a result, that's fine. That happens when you take chances. You win some, you lose some. But that was a bold move, and I was--and am--there for it.
And McIntosh took that chance right in the middle of the biggest upheaval in CFB since the creation of the NCAA. Seriously: NIL, unrestricted transfers, and conference realignment that has completely ditched the regional model the sport has always relied on. Whoa. Not surprising that things are hard to predict right now, and that it's hard to build a new identity for a program when the whole sport is undergoing an identity change. This is like the non-binary of sport. Who the F knows what's going on (or why, or whatever--and I'm just trying to be funny, not political--that's for a different converstaion, over a beer, not here
.
So, where are the Badgers as they head to USC? First, they won the games they were supposed to win. They didn't beat the spread in either one, and I couldn't care less. Statistically they massively outplayed both of those teams, they just had some misses here and there. Not great, but I can live with that. Winning the games you are supposed to win is underrated, right
SFIrish??? Oh--I think she's abandoned football maybe forever after that one...
Their "Air Raid" looks more like an Air Meander, but, honestly, they showed some pretty good flashes even against Alabama. Pauling is tough in the slot, and Locke made a few great throws in there against a freaking great team. The offense will look better against USC than it did against Alabama. And USC doesn't have the offensive weapons that Bama does. I'm always worried about the big play--I have been as long as I've been a Badger, that's just a 5-star vs. 3-star thing--but they ain't gonna torch us the same way as the Tide.
Honestly, I don't know a thing about USC except that they pushed a one-dimensional (apparently) Michigan pretty hard in Ann Arbor, and they beat an LSU team that looks a little lesser than maybe people expected in a neutral site game on the first weekend of the year. Seriously, there's a lot of football yet to be played that will tell us how good all these teams really are. Be honest, has Michigan looked that good so far
this season?
Which brings me back to where I started thinking about this thread: I'm not a betting man, but -15.5 is--probably--taking advantage of people who are overreacting to early returns. I don't expect Wisconsin to win, but I think this game will be within two scores. And if it isn't, well, maybe I'll be back next week, or maybe I'll be back next year. Either way, call your friends. They are worth it.
And
@847badgerfan --see--I'll stop in a bit more. Now go get that LAD straightened out.
