Wisconsin Football is one of the least upset-able programs in the country

Wisconsin Football is one of the best programs in the country at avoiding the big upset.

This feels really strange for me to write. I know it’s true Wisconsin football is not an easy team to upset, but I’m still not super crushed by the loss to BYU last weekend. I should feel worse about it because it’s just so unlike the Badgers. But I don’t.

Perhaps it’s because I know it was such a fluke, or it’s that the Big Ten race was completely unaffected by the loss, or even the fact that Wisconsin just wasn’t playing like a Playoff contender in the first couple of games of the season so I had already punted on national championship hopes (for now, anyway). I’m not sure.

I started thinking about just how unusual that loss was though. When was the last time Wisconsin lost in true upset fashion? Before BYU, which is absolutely an upset, Wisconsin’s last loss was to Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship game where the Buckeyes were 3.5-point favorites. Wisconsin, although ranked higher than Ohio State, was the underdog.

The 2016 season saw Wisconsin drop three games. In back-to-back weeks the Badgers lost to Michigan on the road and Ohio State at home. Both games had the Badgers as double-digit underdogs. The third loss was in the Big Ten Championship to Penn State where Wisconsin was actually a 2.5-point favorite. Technically, Wisconsin was upset in that game.

We have to go back to 2015 to find a true upset for Wisconsin. In 2015 Wisconsin lost at home to Northwestern and Iowa. This was Paul Chryst’s first year in Madison. Those losses hurt, but it’s been since 2015 that the Badgers lost to a team it shouldn’t have and had those same kinds of hurting losses.

Wisconsin played a full two seasons without being upset while every other major college football power in that time span suffered multiple upsets.

For comparison: Last year alone the top programs in the country mostly suffered major upsets.

• Oklahoma lost to Iowa State and was a 30.5-point favorite. At home, no less.
• Ohio State went to Iowa and got slaughtered as a 20.5-point favorite.
• Clemson lost to Syracuse in the Carrier Dome as a 23.5-point favorite.
• Alabama lost to Auburn as a 5-point favorite. That’s not a huge upset, but it’s still worth mentioning as the Tide went on the win the national championship.
• Penn State lost as a 10-point favorite to Michigan State, albeit it with some unusual rain delays.
• TCU lost at Iowa State when the Horned Frogs were ranked No. 4 in the country. This was after Iowa State had gotten some momentum. TCU was only a 7-point favorite.

Only Georiga and UCF were able to get through the season unscathed by massive underdogs as top-ranked teams. And UCF only got there once it beat Auburn, who was a top-ranked team until that point. That’s another upset.

This trend goes back to 2016 too. Oklahoma lost to Houston in 2016 in Ed Oliver and Tom Herman’s huge breakout performance. Ohio State lost a thriller to then Penn State in 2016 as a large favorite. And Clemson lost to Pitt in a shocking upset.

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Highly-ranked teams losing to unranked opponents as double-digit favorites is a common thing in college football. It apparently happens almost once a year to most of the top-ranked teams in the country now. Wisconsin seems to have avoided that, until now.

I may sound like I’m in the ‘denial’ stage of my grievance, but I think it’s kind of impressive that Wisconsin made it through both 2016 and 2017 without dropping a major upset, even though it had come close at times. The Badgers just never let those games actually derail their seasons.

Everything eventually catches up to you, and it caught up to the Badgers last weekend. But I’ve long thought the way the Badgers play, with a commitment to running the ball and playing defense, rather than outscoring opponents and relying on home run plays with high variability, is a fool-proof way to not lose to inferior teams.

It takes a special formula to beat the Badgers, and it’s a formula we’ve seen now only once since 2015 in Madison. Could BYU have written the script to take down Bucky? Sure. What I think is more likely is Wisconsin played it’s first bad game (so bad it finally lost to a lesser team) in more than two years. Wisconsin is too well coached and has too strong of a culture to let that happen again. If Wisconsin is better than the team it’s playing, it will likely always win that game just as it has for the last two-plus seasons under Paul Chryst.

Taking all of this into consideration, I’ll leave you with to ponder this question and contemplate the implications of your answer: Is Iowa better than Wisconsin?