The Wisconsin Badgers have decided at a terrible time to go on a "no cupcake" diet. They have just come off their first non-bowl game season for the first time in 22 years and will play zero FCS opponents in the 2025 season. Of course, the non-conference schedules are mostly worked out years in advance, but this is another reminder of the gauntlet that Wisconsin is about to enter in 2025. It's a bad time to be without cupcakes.
Wisconsin is one of ten teams without an FCS opponent in its 2025 fall schedule. Michigan, USC, and UCLA are the only other Big Ten teams on the list.
The Badgers have the hardest Big Ten schedule this year, with zero FCS schools
The Wisconsin Badgers are listed as having one of the hardest strengths of schedule in the entire college landscape. Part of that comes from how their non-conference schedule looks. They have three non-conference games, and one is against Alabama. The other two are against Miami (Ohio) which was a bowl program last season, and Middle Tennessee which is a low-level FBS program (currently).
If having no FCS schools and Alabama in the non-conference wasn't bad enough, the Big Ten schedule makes it even tougher. The Badgers only see one Big Ten opponent that finished in the bottom five of the conference last season, Maryland. Instead, Wisconsin gets to see seven of the top eight Big Ten finishers from last season. The only team they won't see in the top in the top eight is Penn State.
This means they have Oregon, Ohio State, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa all looming in the 2025 schedule. It's a brutal schedule that makes making six wins feel like a nightmare, but if the Badgers don't, they will start a new streak of not going to a bowl game rather than restarting the bowl streak. Maybe the no-cupcake diet wasn't the best idea this season.