Badgers Will Face Five of the Top 25 in Coaches Poll

The USA Today coaches poll, now known as the US LBM Coaches Poll, released their preseason top 25 on Monday. The Badgers found themselves unranked, but saw five of their 2024 opponents make the list. Oregon, Alabama, Penn State, USC and Iowa were ranked in the top 25.

Wisconsin has one of the toughest schedules this year on paper, and the coaches poll seems to agree. Five of their 12 regular season games will be against one of the top rated teams in the country. For the math lovers out there, that means the 42% of Wisconsin's schedule this season will be against a preseason top 25 team. Oof.

The Badgers are projected to be a solid team in their own right, so most of those games are winnable. There's also always the chance that some of those ranked teams aren't as good as people think, but still, it's going to be a challenging year when you aren't favored in half of your games.

Head coach Luke Fickell went 7-6 in his first year at the helm, and Badger fans will expect more this year. But looking at the schedule, it's not easy to identify eight or more wins. Even unranked teams like Nebraska will be gritty, hard to win games. He'll likely need multiple wins against ranked opponents in order to improve upon last year's record and satisfy a voracious fanbase that expects to compete for Big Ten Championships.

Preseason polls aren't the be-all and end-all, but they give teams an initial measuring stick, and right now the Badgers have a tough road ahead. On the other hand though, a 3-0 start and a win against Alabama would give the the team a lot of momentum heading into the meat of their schedule, not to mention a probable top-15 ranking. The start of the season just a few short weeks away, and Fickell and company will have to put all the talk aside and start stacking these tough wins.