formerlybis

Badger fan here. Just FYI, there are two names on this questionable list that are key contributors for the Badgers - Hicks and Van Ginkel. Hicks has been a pleasant surprise in the defensive backfield this year so far in a corps that is very inexperienced except for one guy (D'Cota Dixon). Van Ginkel got hurt a couple of games ago and played only a few snaps at Iowa - he is one of the leaders and makes a lot of splash plays. There is more depth at LB than at other positions (though it's getting thinner . . .), but it's still a pretty significant loss if he's not able to go. One more comment on another name on the list - Shaw, when healthy, would be competing for the #2 RB, but there are 2-3 nearly equal alternatives, so not much of an issue there - he hasn't played this year at all.

Badger fan here and native Madisonian, but I haven't lived there for a long time and don't go to many games. I did grow up in the neighborhood surrounding CR, though, and can tell you that the on-street parking will fill up really early. I assume this is still the case, but there are people who are selling parking on their lawns, and there are also a few nearby churches who sell parking in their lots, too - the last time we visited, we parked at Blessed Sacrament, and had less than a 10 minute walk. There is a big lot at Edgewood college, which you also pay for, and is close to 10 minutes walking, too. Then you have ramps downtown, which can be anywhere from 15-30+ minute walks. Finally, there is Lot 60, which is a big first-come, first-served university lot that has a shuttle. I don't know if that helps or not, but that's what I know. If you've been before, you know that UW has multiple bars/beer gardens set up as the preferred pre-game festivities as opposed to tailgating.

Pedantically speaking, it's in less than 1/11th of the time (4 games vs. 45), but if you think a dime is about a quarter, then who I am I to quibble? If it makes you feel better, the BYU fans expressed similar fatalistic tendencies prior to playing us. I am legitimately worried about this game.

As a badger fan perusing the board this week, I assumed the OP was asking why the Badgers have losses. Alas, if only wishing made it so we could avoid those things. To answer the question, I thought I would cover all the Badger losses in the Paul Chryst era in reverse chronological order: 2018: BYU 21-24. Ugh. Missed a late FG to tie, but shouldn't have been in that position in the first place 2017: OSU 21-27 (B1G CG). Had the ball in buckeye territory with a chance to win as time was waning, got called for holding on a pass where PI probably should have been called - would have been offsetting and not forced UW to convert a longer down and distance (which, anyone could tell you, is not UW's forte). 2016: PSU 31-38 (B1G CG). Raced out to a huge lead and let McSorely come back and beat us in the end 2016: OSU 20-23 (OT). We had'em, gosh darnit. 2016: @ Michy 7-14. Defensive struggle where Michy had one long pass play to make the difference 2015: NW 7-13. Still mad. Badgers scored to take the lead late, but overturned as refs ruled ball hit ground after three steps out of bounds and WR falling to the ground - he had control, gosh darnit. 2015: Iowa 6-10. Badgers fumbled on the one yard line going in for a score. Hawkeyes run the table, but lose in the B1G CG and Rose Bowl. 2015: Alabama 17-35 (@ Jerryworld, and Chryst's first game). Uh, yeah. Alabama good. UW was in it for awhile, but big plays doomed Bucky that night. That's it. I hadn't realized that Chryst's teams have only lost one true road game so far. So, you guys getting us in Madison is a break! Also hadn't realized they were all one possession games (except 'Bama). So, when it comes to this week's game, I am worried about your offense against our defense - we have not been up to our standards, especially on the perimeter. And I am worried our offense has been its own worst enemy with both the play calling and untimely penalties - we are not a high-scoring offense and I fear we might need to be this week. Anyway, keep your collective chin up, I think better days are ahead for you (yeah, low bar at the moment, but you get what I mean).

My suggestion is to go to the Wisconsin scout site and find the tailgating board. There's a pinned post near the top of the board that has a lot of good advice. The farmer's market on the Capitol square is great for people watching tomorrow morning, but it's a night game, so you might want to save your energy a little. Also, lot 60 does have tailgating, but in my opinion, the pageantry is more at the bars and beer gardens nearer to the stadium. I would also recommend checking out the student Union and going out on the terrace at some point in your visit.

FYI, the a-hole chant is an unfortunate tradition on the Brees Terrace entrances of Camp Randall. It doesn't matter who you are or how nice you act, you'll hear it.

Excuse my re-entry into this discussion, but geographic proximity is an element that adds intensity to a rivalry. It's not absolutely required, but a lot of the best ones have that. Ann Arbor is like 40 minutes to the Ohio border (& Sparty fans are all over, too). UNC & Duke are 8 miles apart. The Twin Cities are 15 miles to the Wisconsin border, and a lot of UW grads work there. There are, of course, exceptions to the norm - you had Okla, and there's USC/ND, too. We had/have a fairly heated rivalry with MSU in basketball (it's cooled down a bit as UW has established itself). But if you run into fans of the other team on a regular basis in real life (not just on a message board), like us with Minnesota, it makes a big difference in the heat of the rivalry. I don't know if there's enough crossover between our two fanbases' footprints that we'll ever really develop "the hate."

Johnny Rodgers in 1974? I was pretty young at the time and Rodgers was one of the earliest college football stars I remembered growing up & I naturally associated him with Nebraska & over the years I must've talked myself into thinking I actually saw him that day. So I was off by a couple years - you did have David Humm, though.

Wisconsin fan here, I'll try to respond to some of the things here. First, most serious longtime (and mostly long-suffering) Badger fans recognize that Alvarez patterned the program after Devaney and Nebraska. Fans under the age of about 30-35 haven't really suffered in their conscious sports lives, and they tend to be the cockier, less grounded in reality types. Second, I don't think we've known you long enough to be a rivalry. Although one of the great highlights in a dark era of Badger lore was beating the Johnny Rodgers Huskers in 1974, we just haven't played many times yet. We've also had the better of it when we've met while you've been in the B1G, so we haven't built up much animosity. I would understand if you've built up animosity towards us given the results, though. Third, we hate Minnesota and they hate us, and it spills over into pro sports (or maybe it's the other way around, but anyway, there is mutual disdain). The UW-MN game is the longest continuously played rivalry in college football (at least in major college football - DePauw-Wabash might actually be longer). Despite the suckitude of Minnesota football for a half-century, and Wisconsin winning the last dozen and 19 of the last 21, UW still trails in the overall series 58-59-8. We love carrying around the axe when we win and chopping down the goalposts (I'm sure the Gophers would too, if they ever got the chance) - a couple of years ago, the Gopher players decided they weren't going to let the Badgers cut down the goalposts on their end in Mpls (see pic below). In my opinion, it should always be the last game, despite Nebraska clearly being more of a peer program. I do like the idea of Halloween week, though.

Before the game, the bars on State Street will be navigable. Not sure there's a designated Husker bar, but State Street Brats is kind of the one that visitors tend to congregate at. After the game, it will be very very very crowded on State St. (Freakfest) - There are bars nearer to the stadium on Regent St. that might be a bit less crowded, but probably still busy.

Here's a more recent pic from Freakfest, and yes, there are some nsfw costumes out there - note there is now live music and a stage at the capitol: Here's a pic from 1981, when it was an unofficial event, without a concert:

Hey guys, Wisconsin fan here and I come in peace with information. In addition to this being a night game at Camp Randall - which is normally a recipe for a bunch of "well-served" patrons - it is also the Madison Halloween celebration night known as Freakfest, held on State St (which is an 8 block stretch between the capitol and campus). It is a lot more "corporate" than it used to be, but it attracts people from all over. It will be crowded in Madison that night, and chances are a lot of them will be quite drunk. So, if you're looking for trouble, you will likely find it. You still might find it even if you're not looking for it. This is not something we're proud of at all, but thought you should be forewarned.

Ummm. . . . No. If you don't know, you better ask somebody. UW is very strong in hoops -- finished no lower than 4th in conference for a decade under our Coach Bo (Ryan) and has been to the NCAA tourney like 14 years in a row. The comments about low scoring are about UW's deliberate style. It's somewhat of a myth because UW routinely scores in the 60s while holding its opponents to the 40s and 50s. Our football team scored over 70 three times last year, so that's where the jokes come from.

But it could have also been worse -- the ball was fumbled 3 times (2 by NU & 1 by UW) and Nebraska got all 3. Imagine if the reverse were true. I do agree with Enhance that the gameplan or playcalling (whichever it was) did not play to Nebraska's offensive strengths (or more specifically TMart's). That can be cleaned up quite a bit, but you guys have to take care of the ball a lot better.

Just bolding the statements above to see what you think now. I didn't believe any of them going in, but I attribute that more to a lack of knowledge of UW than pure blind homerism. I also didn't believe Toon would be negated like so many posters had wishfully stated -- perhaps Dennard wasn't fully healthy. UW showed a power running game for the first time this year, and they got some turnovers, so they are still on an upward arc (though still not much room to the ceiling -- maybe we can get better at defending kick returns). As I wrote in another thread, I do believe the NU deficiencies are correctable. I still see you as winning the Legends division, but you'll have some tussles along the way. Kill Brutus!

Badger fan here. My one-game sample's view of TMart: I think he is a dangerous runner (both designed and scrambling) and also a darn good ball distributor in both the traditional option and those quick-hitter, glorified long-handoff passes to the wideouts. He is a darn accurate passer when the first read is open. And this mythology of a poor throwing motion I think was not on display last night -- I've seen much worse. To me, the poorest aspect of TMart last night was happy feet. He started panicking and scrambling -- usually into the teeth of the defense -- when the pressure hadn't really gotten that heavy. I believe the Badger defensive coaches decided to only rush 3 or 4 the entire second half because they recognized this. That should be a coachable deficiency, but maybe you guys know better -- has he always been this way? Is he even coached to do that because of his running ability? Anyway, I think you guys have the talent to put this one game behind you, learn from it, and move forward -- you'll have some tussles ahead of you, but I think you are still the favorite to win your division. Kill Brutus!

You know, one of the most obvious things that opens a window to the Wisconsin psyche is the foam cheeshead itself. Minnesotans & Illinoisians meant to use that term in a derogatory way (as in "you f'in' cheeseheads!") toward us and we just decided to make it into both a prideful & self-deprecating joke. It's more of a Packer thing than UW, and it really is somewhat against etiquette to use the cheesehead at UW games, but the point is we like to have a little fun, even if it's at our own expense. In the bad old days, we lost a game 55-2 to MSU -- our chant at the end of the game? "WE SCORED FIRST! WE SCORED FIRST!"

I would quibble with this from the Wisconsin perspective. We have all sorts of depth on the lines and routinely rotate the DLs all game, so I'd find it unlikely you'll be wearing them out. If you think that's your biggest advantage, that's bad news for you guys. And, while I also see that UW couldn't have done much better from a score per possession standpoint in the first 4 games, there is one mildly disconcerting thing for Badger fans that could get better with the O over time -- it feels really weird saying this, but it's the running game. The power running game has been UW's identity for a long time, but this year, it's been rather uninspiring. We've ripped off some big runs that make the ypc look pretty good, But, we are accustomed to seeing 12 play drives with 10 runs type of offense, and so far, the ground game hasn't been able to grind like that. Part of that is due to using Wilson's talents, but part of it is also that we're getting stopped for little or no gain on plays that we're used to seeing go for 4-5 yards. With the talent on our OL, this really should get better. Defensively, we haven't caused many turnovers and the pass rush has been mediocre. There's room to improve there and it's a new DC -- as both the coaches and players adjust, they'll hopefully improve. And our PK from last year has been injured, so when he comes back, that'll be an improvement, too. So, I would respectfully disagree that UW is at its ceiling. I would agree Wisconsin has played closer to it than N, though.

I do think UW took one for the league in the divisions so that Michigan and OSU could be in separate divisions. It would have been so common sense to have PSU, OSU, Michy, MSU, Indiana, & Purdue in the east and everyone else in the west -- all the natural rivalries are retained. This "competitive balance" excuse is a sham -- there's no way to predict the relative strength of schools into the future -- Illinois, for example, went to a BCS bowl within the last 5 years I think, but they're currently viewed as middle tier. You can say this about many of the schools (Purdue was good for awhile when Brees and then Orton were there, MSU under D'Antonio, Northwestern has had some success, etc.). So how do you know the divisions are going to be competitively balanced? It's 100% all about Michigan and OSU, and that is crap. Sorry, ya hit a hot button. I don't really get why the need to go to more teams, either, but I'm curmudgeonly. I like 12 teams because we've been at 11 so long & now we get a championship game. But more than that means we won't get to play almost half the teams anyway, and then you can exacerbate the problems with easy schedule vs. hard schedule with who you do and don't play.

Well, you caught me -- I checked last night on my BlackBerry and was doing it from memory. I also got confused with the Michigan game where we ran 31 times in a row (or something like that -- my facts have been a little hazy already ). Budmayr, though he was the 2nd QB available, was the clear #3 in the spring. The #2 was Curt Phillips who got hurt (and got hurt again this year -- he & Tolzien were, at one point, #1 and #1a). And if both Tolzien & Budmayr would've also gotten hurt, they would have burned the redshirt of a frosh before putting Tice in (which is why I said he might've been #5).

While I agree with my fellow Badger fan that we have our trolls, I would venture to say that those of us who were fans of the Badger football team in the pre-Alvarez years are nearly uniformly humble. We sucked for 30 years. Oh, there'd be a blip of a .500 team here and there, but for the most part, we were cellar-dwellers or darn close to it for the vast majority of those years. Basketball was the same, but for even longer. In fact, the only Badger sports team that was ever any good when I was growing up was hockey -- hockey still draws more fans at Wisconsin than most NHL teams. We can be a little more arrogant as hockey fans because we really are one of the "royalty" programs (like Duke in hoops). But in football (and basketball), we old timers tend to really appreciate the success over the last almost 20 years now and often have to figuratively pinch ourselves to make sure we're not dreaming. Quite frankly, I didn't see any of this coming, and am enjoying the heck out of it now because I have in the back of my mind that it could go back to the bad old days someday. I, for one, am excited to have N with the B1G because you are a football royal. We can only hope for N-type level of sustained success at UW.

Badger fan here. I just want to address this RUTS reputation. Last year, UW scored 70+ on Wofford, Indiana, and Northwestern. In all of those cases, the vast % of the damage was done on the ground or by 3rd-stringers. There were also some defensive scores that added to the total. In the Indiana game where UW scored over 80, the one highlight they show is a long-bomb wounded-duck, shoulda-called-fair-catch thrown by the third stringer when they were up 50. That was the only pass thrown in the 2nd half -- the only one and it was 3rd down and long at the time. The other case that people point to is going for 2 against Minnesota midway through the 4th quarter when up 26 or something like that. Bielema said "the card said go for two". I think that was pretty lame, but given that Minnesota nearly came back on UW the year before (UW had a two-score lead and was inside the gopher red zone when there was a fumble and a long scoop & score to tighten it up considerably), you can halfway forgive him for trying to play the percentages. I said halfway -- it was a little bit of RUTSing and it got the coach fired I don't think there should be any worry of RUTS with UW on Nebraska -- you guys are waaaaay to good -- just concerned about winning at all. I don't care if Mother Theresa was playing runningback, anytime you put up 81 on an opponent, you're RUTS. Hell, after scoring 70, I'd start telling my runningbacks to start taking dives...not scoring points. That's pretty absurd. You're telling me effectively taking a knee for an entire quarter is less offensive than giving backups the chance to get a taste of in-game experience? UW scored the 70 points in 3 quarters against Northwestern, with the last touchdown coming off of an interception. Yeah going for 2 against Minnesota looks pretty bad, but they're practically in-state rivals. When Jim Harbaugh did it to Pete Carrol it was him being a "fierce competitor" and sending a message, but UW does it and it's a crime against humanity. What a load of bs. If you want to keep us out of the endzone, then man up and put a fu**ing helmet on the ball. I'm not saying "take a knee" the whole quarter...I'm saying that I wouldn't want my players scoring, after we'd already put up 70 points. If that means letting the opposing team bring them down after a couple of yards, then so be it. That would be far less offensive then running it up to 83. You guys were up 52-13 halfway through the third. If you wanted to get your backups quality reps, then that's a perfect time to put them in and let them get after it. You guys scored 83 (eighty effing three) points and you're going to tell me that you didn't run it up? C'mon, man. When Jim Harbaugh went for two when he was up 48-21, it was a classless move. There are folks that may have excused that because of the lashings that Stanford took at the hands of USC, but you need to act like you've been there. I went back and looked -- the second to last score was a pick-6 (do you tell the DB to fall before crossing the goal line?). The last score was on a 4th and 7 from the 17 yard line -- you obviously don't kick a field goal, right? So, the 4th (maybe 5th) string QB was in -- Nate Tice (son of Mike Tice, the current Bears O-line coach and former Vikings coach). He's a gangly guy who probably runs the 40 in like 7 seconds. They called a QB draw, and he ended up scoring, basically untouched, right up the middle. What are you supposed to do? This has been Tice's only playing time of his entire UW career (and assuming no injuries to our first 3 strings at QB, it will continue to be) and people were pretty damned happy that he got the chance to score -- the only chance he'll likely ever get and he'll have a story to tell forever.

Oregon State has never been a "Great" pac 10 team. Lets just dispel that myth right away... Neither team's non-conference has been great, so don't take huge offense to us pointing out the Wisconsin non-conference games as weak. Also, Kansas (unless it was Mangino's magic season) doesn't count. Nebraskan's know where BB came from, we know that scheduling philosophy and we'll ridicule it. Same as we would if we were going up against K-state next week. (where it came from) It deserves it. No matter which team you root for that non-conference deserves to be made light of... Nebraska's isn't THAT far behind either, but it isn't that bad. Bill Snyder taught BB something I guess, scheduling. Saturday we'll see what else he's got. BB had several teachers in that regard -- Alvarez pretty much scheduled the same way (and he's the AD now), and Iowa has been pretty similar, too (BB has a Hawk tattoo from his playing days and coached on the staff there too).

Badger fan here. I just want to address this RUTS reputation. Last year, UW scored 70+ on Wofford, Indiana, and Northwestern. In all of those cases, the vast % of the damage was done on the ground or by 3rd-stringers. There were also some defensive scores that added to the total. In the Indiana game where UW scored over 80, the one highlight they show is a long-bomb wounded-duck, shoulda-called-fair-catch thrown by the third stringer when they were up 50. That was the only pass thrown in the 2nd half -- the only one and it was 3rd down and long at the time. The other case that people point to is going for 2 against Minnesota midway through the 4th quarter when up 26 or something like that. Bielema said "the card said go for two". I think that was pretty lame, but given that Minnesota nearly came back on UW the year before (UW had a two-score lead and was inside the gopher red zone when there was a fumble and a long scoop & score to tighten it up considerably), you can halfway forgive him for trying to play the percentages. I said halfway -- it was a little bit of RUTSing and it got the coach fired I don't think there should be any worry of RUTS with UW on Nebraska -- you guys are waaaaay to good -- just concerned about winning at all.

Hey guys, UW fan here. UW has played UNLV several times over the last couple of decades (and actually lost one at home). The Badger alumni like the trip to Vegas and UNLV liked the number of Badger fans that would buy season tickets just to go to that one game. There were times during this series when UNLV was fairly competent -- John Robinson was their coach for a while. I think that series is done though. Northern Illinois was in the MAC championship last year, returned nearly all their starters, and hired the UW defensive coordinator as their head coach when their previous coach took the MN job. A lot of us, including me, had that game at Soldier Field circled as a potential trouble spot -- moreso than Ore. St. Don't kid yourself about the MAC -- the top teams in that league would routinely be pretty competitive in the middle tier of B1G teams (in case you didn't know, the MAC has had an agreement to supply non-con games with the B1G for several years). So, the fact that it turned into a major laugher was at least a little bit surprising. Regardless, none of them compare to the test this Saturday. Looking forward to it.