This Week in Badgers: The Day the Music Died
This Week in Badgers: Season 2, Episode 2
Well that's a bummer.
On one hand I'm glad the months-long soap opera about whether or not the Badgers will play this year is over. Seriously, one more "anonymous source" Tweet I was going to lose it. On the other hand, ugh, football is gone.
Obviously first and foremost you have to feel absolutely awful for the players. These guys and their families have worked their whole life to get to this point and now for many, its done. I'm just heartbroken that some of these guys walked off the field in Pasadena in January, worked their ass off for 8 months and then....nothing. Many will be back, some have played their last game.
If you're deep into the Wisconsin football world, and if you're reading this Newsletter you are, you've been following a lot of these players since they were Sophomores or Juniors in High School. To not see them finish out their careers, man it sucks.
As a fan, we'll be fine. Twitter is great at showcasing the worst of the worst fans, but I think most people are OK and supportive of this decision, as much as it sucks.
Maybe this is just me rationalizing it, but when I thought about Saturdays in the fall with no crowds, no ESPN College Game Day outside the biggest game of the week, no Regent Street bar hopping, no Bowl games (probably), hell no bars to even drink at while watching the game, it lost a lot of the luster for me. I always knew a large appeal of college football to me was the "stuff" that went along with it, but this really made me separate the on and off-field draw. Great athletes playing in boring, sterile environments is what the NFL is for.
Playing Rutgers in an empty Camp Randall in late November is better than nothing, but that's about the best you can say about it.
I'm with Hicks on the Spring football. Maybe the whole country turns it around and they can cobble together something for the Spring, but I'm really not hopeful there. There's a Paul Chryst Spring Game joke in there somewhere I'm too depressed to make. The B10 already got my hopes up by releasing a schedule for 2020 and then days later pulling the plug, I'm not falling for that again.
In the meantime, I have no idea what is going to happen from here!
I love College Football for its rhythms. Summer Conditioning. Fall camp. The Non-Conference. The Conference Games. Bowl Game. Recruiting Class. NFL Draft. Rinse, Repeat. That's all gone.
We've spent the past 5 years watching Paul Chryst incrementally build the Badgers to higher and higher points. We've celebrated every great recruit that was going to make the difference, searched Emmet Perry's Instagram to see if he was coming back (wait, that was just me), thought way too much about the 3rd string OLB group. Now, its been thrown into chaos.
I'm ready for anything. I expect we'll probably have a decent amount of transfers, recruiting class changes, hell even changes in the sport itself that may make it unrecognizable in 2021 and beyond. You have no other choice but to roll with it.
As far as TWIB, I have no idea what I'll write about so I imagine an extended hiatus. I had a great "Deep Depth Chart Fantasy Draft" with Matt Belz (Isaac Guerrendo went #1) that I might release as a B-Side in 2025 and a bit about the 1942 Helms National Championship Team that is probably lost to time, but when the only new content to really write about is about what Pat Forde's high ranking sources tell him about a possible SUMMER season, pass.
I've enjoyed the hell out of writing this, the interaction and rabbit holes I've been able to go down. So thank you.
I hear the leaves change color in the fall? Might be something to check out while Mike Lucas does a 381 day Twitter countdown that we didn't know we needed until he mentioned it as a possibility.
Go Badgers.