The Wisconsin Badgers have won 747 times in their history, starting in 1889, when they played their first game against Calumet Club of Milwaukee and lost 27-0. They would play another game that season, which also resulted in a loss. For a program that has won nearly 750 times, the first couple of years were rough.
After two seasons of football, the Wisconsin Badgers were sitting at 1-5 and were already moving on from their second coach. That single win, the very first, was monumental and still is Wisconsin's most impressive victory of all time. Let's look a little closer at that game.
Wisconsin defeats Whitewater Normal School 106-0 for their first ever win
In their third game in existence, the Wisconsin Badgers took on Whitewater Normal School, which is now called the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. The "normal" school was a school for training teachers. It's a weird name for a school by modern standards, but it was called that simply because that was the school in which you learned about the "norms" or the "standards" that every person should know, and thus, as a teacher, you can teach.
This may be part of the reason why the score was as one-sided as it ended up being. A teacher school, especially in the 1890s, wouldn't have been known for the type of students needed to compete in football.
There isn't much information on the game itself besides that it's in the record books as Wisconsin's most lopsided win of all time. The coach was Ted Mestre, and the team captain was James Kerr. It was in an era when the forward pass had yet to come about, so it was more of a rugby-style of football with lots of runs and laterals.
Wisconsin's winning that game would start a century or more of wins, which later compiled to 747 total wins. But it all started with that first big win. The biggest ever is still the first.