The Wisconsin athletic department thinks you are a fucking idiot
And will continue to do so until Paul Chryst is no longer the head football coach.
Fans of the Wisconsin Badgers are as loyal and engaged as any fanbase in the country. The athletic department counts on it, in fact, because they are printing money over there while exerting minimal effort to put a worthwhile product on the football field.
On Saturday afternoon, the Badgers scored 14 points at home and lost to Washington State an, at best, middle of the pack Pac-12 team. Somehow this wasn’t even one of the worst two performances of a team in their own division, but it was still putrid.
This wasn’t the worst loss of Paul Chryst’s tenure (that would be the 2019 loss at Illinois, while favored by 30 points, as the No. 6 team in the nation or maybe the 2018 loss at home to BYU, as a 22 point favorite, and sitting, again, at No. 6 in the country) but it was emblematic of this football program and what it truly is.
Just about every year since the Big Ten switched to East and West divisions the Badgers have been predicted to win it. They’ve done that four out of eight times (three out of seven times when Chryst has been the head coach) but have never won the conference title. They also haven’t won the division in three out of the past four seasons, with Iowa and Northwestern (twice!) representing the West in Inidianapolis.
The Badgers routinely win bowl games, but their last three wins have been in the Las Vegas, Duke’s Mayo, and Pinstripe Bowls respectively. Their last bowl win that you wouldn’t be embarrassed to crow about in a bar argument was the Orange Bowl in 2017 against Miami and they haven’t won a Rose Bowl since the literal turn of the century (suck it, Big Ten member UCLA).
Since that 13-1 Orange Bowl Championship season, Wisconsin has gone:
2018: 8-5 overall; lost to Minnesota, at home, for the first time in 14 years; lost to BYU at home as 22-point favorites
2019: 10-4 overall; lost at Illinois as 30-point favorites; won B1G West; lost B1G Title Game to Ohio State and Rose Bowl to Oregon
2020: 4-3 overall; favored in all six regular season games but went 3-3; COVID season, so there were many extenuating circumstances that made this a weird season
2021: 9-4 overall; lost to Minnesota with B1G West title on the line; embarrassed themselves in multiple early-season ranked vs. ranked games on national TV
If you look at that from the perspective of All of College Football, it’s pretty good! But the Badgers have tried to fashion themselves as a team that deserves to be in the national conversation of college football. A team that is knocking on the door of the Playoff. A team that should be mentioned in the same breath as Michigan and Ohio State!
Hell, in the past five seasons (including this one) the Badgers have started the year ranked in the top-20! That’s a team that is right there…right? Well, they finished the 2018, 2020, and 2021 seasons unranked (they finished No. 11 in 2019!) and home losses to Washington State don’t portend a ranked finish in 2022.
The Badgers have always taken pride in their status as a developmental program…and they should! Brett Ciancia at Pick Six Previews has an enlightening look at teams that out-produce their recruiting rankings in his annual season preview. He rates teams by “win conversion” (comparing team’s recruiting level to their actual win total) and “player development” (recruiting rank vs. NFL Draft picks) and Wisconsin almost always appears in the top-10 of both.
This year, the Badgers ranked No. 10 in win conversion (recruiting ranks from 2013-2021 vs. total wins 2017-2021) and No. 2 in player development (recruiting ranks 2015-2018 vs. NFL Draft picks 2019-2022). The only teams who are better in these metrics are Iowa, Utah and BYU (Iowa State and Boston College are close to Wisconsin too).
Wisconsin ranks as the No. 26 team in the nation over the past five years (2018-2022) in average recruiting ranking (per 247Sports), which is also pretty good! Between 2019-2021, the Badgers had their three most highly rated recruiting classes in school history, culminating with the No. 15 class in 2021.
That plummeted down to No. 44 with the 2022 class and the 2023 class, which features zero blue chip players, is currently ranked No. 54 in the country and No. 13 in the Big Ten, behind such recruiting powerhouses as Vanderbilt and WAY behind Northwestern. While only six B1G teams have a verbal commit in the 2024 class, two of them are Iowa (four commits) and Minnesota (one), programs that Wisconsin is in direct competition with on the field and recruiting trail.
My thoughts on Paul Chryst’s decision to go nearly a year without anyone in charge of the recruiting department are well known (I’m against it) if you’re a sicko who follows this stuff closely and the class rankings for 2022 and 2023 let me know that I’m correct. The Badgers now have the most robust recruiting department they’ve ever had and hopefully that makes 2024 a bounceback group.
Now, with all of this background information out of the way let’s discuss why Wisconsin thinks you are a fucking idiot.
Paul Chryst isn’t completely stuck in his ways, but he is stubborn and averse to change. He won’t make a move, whether it be on his coaching staff or with his in-game decision making, until it is too late. He kept Joe Rudolph around for at least one season too long and his fourth down decisions have vacillated between outright hostility towards the idea of going for it and begrudging, barely acknowledged acceptance when it is successful.
The most recent example of this just so happened to come in the game against Wazzu on Saturday! Facing a 4th and 3 on Washington State’s 47-yard line in the second quarter of a tie game, Chryst made the correct decision to go for it. Yay! Graham Mertz’s pass to Isaac Guerendo fell incomplete, however, giving the ball over to the Cougars and setting into motion Chryst Kicking Himself For Making The Right Call.
Of course Chryst is taking the exact wrong lesson from that decision! Football coaches are notoriously conservative with calls like this, because it is far easier to justify the punt, even if it ends with the other team returning it for a touchdown, than it is going for it and not getting it. Doesn’t matter that it was the correct process, the result was bad, therefore throw the process out the window.
The Wisconsin Badgers, for better or worse, will not change one iota until Chryst isn’t their head coach.
They will make the Big Ten title game every so often, but won’t win it. Those chances will also be fewer and farther in between as the Badgers continue to bring in average recruiting classes, who they will develop mind you, that can’t compete with the top-end talent in the conference or country. They’ll win double digit games every four or five years if they get a slightly above average recruiting class one year and develop them into all-conference performers by the time they are seniors. Basically, they’ll be a slightly better Northwestern, winners of the two of the past five B1G West titles…just like Wisconsin!
This may seem like an overreaction to one non-conference loss to you. After all, the Badgers have second most wins in the Big Ten over the past 10 years and past five years! They even have the third most wins over the past three years! However, they are behind Iowa in wins over the past three years, tied with Michigan and Minnesota, and only one win ahead of Penn State.
Things have plateaued under Chryst and we are now at the precipice of the downward turn. Will Wisconsin make a change proactively or will they wait until they have wasted a couple of years spinning their wheels and it’s too late? I think you know the answer to that question.
Demanding more of this team is seen as being unappreciative of all they’ve accomplished since Barry Alvarez took over and turned a perennial laughingstock into a program that is the envy of, easily, 80% of the country. Demanding more of this team is seen as being a reactionary, especially if it comes after a loss like, say, to Washington State at home. Demanding more of this team on the recruiting trail is seen as not understanding the Wisconsin Way of doing things.
And I suppose that’s fine. If you don’t want to demand more of the Badgers, who am I to tell you that’s wrong? Supporting a team that wins more often than they lose and sometimes might compete for a division title isn’t the worst lot in life.
Wisconsin has all of the resources and capital (both monetary and the more amorphous capital of a team that is good and produces NFL Draft picks even if you aren’t a highly rated recruit) to be better, but they don’t want to invest them.
But what about the new facilities and end zone seating? Who gives a shit, that doesn’t make anything on the field better. It just makes it more likely that you will part with your monet to support a product that isn’t as good as it could be.
The Wisconsin athletic department thinks you are a fucking idiot and won’t do anything to change unless you, unless we, make them. I know that I’ll be adjusting my expectations for this unserious program until they make me change them.
I've been a Chryst apologist up until that game. When a defense starts the game allowing you to gain 5-10 yards on every first down by throwing a quick pass, you f'ing take it.
Question, Drew...who? Would you be OK with Jim Leonhard?
Spot on about recruiting. It really came to light when several staff members bolted to MSU