This Week in Badgers: The Off-Season is Here
Season 2 / Episode 16
Welcome to This Week in Badgers where we wait for the Wellerman to bring us sugar and tea and rum. Today we’ll search for Badger football news, remember some guys and talk College Football parity.
Caesar Williams is back! After ending 2019 strong I thought he struggled a bit this year, so hopefully with something resembling a normal off-season we see a bounce back for him.
What was your favorite moment of the Markese Stepp era? Mine was looking up his 2019 game log and talking myself into him being a difference maker. He’s off to Nebraska and the Badgers are out a potential backup RB. Assuming there are no other transfer opportunities out there, this likely means they Badgers will need to rely on one or more of the incoming Freshman RBs for some carries next year.
What was your favorite moment of the Garrett Groshek era? Carrying the Badgers on his back in the 2020 Axe game is certainly up there though I’m partial to the 70 yard screen pass to put away the 2019 Axe game. A perfect play call combined with perfect execution in a huge moment. Folks, you love to see it.
Groshek was already 5 years in, hedged throughout the season when asked about his 2021 plans and is married, so not all that surprising that he’s moving on. Certainly hurts depth but I don’t find myself worrying too much. 2020 showed that while he’s a good player and competent Big Ten RB, if he’s the main option your season probably isn’t going well. While it would have been nice to have him just in case, I’m OK with Guerendo, Davis and the 3 Freshman guys getting a shot and seeing who steps up next year.
Dante Caputo says goodbye. Caputo didn’t see the field his first two years so not much of a surprise he’s out. I usually keep my eye on out-of-state preferred walk-ons as the Badgers seem to have a pretty good track record with them. Eschenbach, Torcio and Maskalunas come to mind as recent contributors. It is obviously much more costly for a player to come from out-of-state so when it happens there seems to be some expectation that they’re good enough potentially earn a scholarship at least contribute down the road. You don’t pay out of state tuition to be left off the travel squad.
Other Stuff
Jack Coan speaks! Well, sorta. A guy he trains with did to The Athletic ($) and its a bit of a wild ride as he doesn’t hold back much. Trainer guy’s Twitter feed is a also a trip and pretty critical of the Badgers for not playing Coan. Your mileage may vary on this one but some fun off-season fodder.
There are some early 2021 polls out already, I guess? I know we like to complain about the Badgers not getting enough respect but having a pretty terrible 2020 and showing up as high as #11 in 2021 polls would be a data point in “they’re respected quite a bit” camp.
Bielema’s coaching staff at Illinois is a who’s who of familiar Badger faces.
Urban Meyer to the NFL. I don’t have a take here other than I wouldn’t mind if he took some of Ryan Day’s staff with him.
Let’s Remember Some Guys
This Week’s Guy is Dan Buenning, a Guard from 2001-2004. With all the great Offensive Lineman to come through Wisconsin I think he gets forgotten a bit and feels like a good guy to remember.
Buenning was a prototypical instate OL recruit out of Green Bay where he was 1st team All-Everything at Bay Port. In 2000 he was part of the two-deep as a true Freshman and would have played in an emergency. Stepped in as a starter in 2001, had a bit of a lost year in 2002 after dealing with mono and a shoulder injury, rebounded with a 2nd Team All-Big Ten performance in 2003 and 1st Team All Big Ten/2nd team All American his final year in 2004.
The Cap Times did a big All-Alvarez team feature following the 2005 season in celebration of Barry’s last year and Buenning was selected as one of the guards.
Interesting to look at the team today:
QB: Brooks Bollinger
RB: Ron Dayne
FB: Cecil Martin
TE: Michael Roan
WR: Chris Chambers and Lee Evans
OL: Panos, McIntosh, Buenning, Rudolph, Raymer
Wildcard: Brent Moss, Brian Calhoun
DT: Don Davey, Wendell Bryant
DE: Tom Burke, Tarek Saleh
LB: Ghidorzi, Thompson, Monty
CB: Jamar Fletcher, Troy Vincent
S: Jim Leonhard, Jason Doering
If we were expanding this team to include post-Alvarez players I feel like there are 3 groups that we don’t discuss at all: QB is Russ and the CB/S groups remain unchanged from the All-Alavarez team. Personally I think the RB spot is set in stone with Dayne but ranking Badger RBs will always be a hot topic, and you can have fun discussions about every other spot as well.
Anyways back to Buenning, he was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 4th round and played 4 years, making 23 starts, in the NFL before injuries started to wear him down. He finished his career with the Florida Tuskers of the UFL where his QB was none other than…UFL MVP Brooks Bollinger (Sorgi was in the NFL that year).
Dan Buenning, remembered.
Ebay Find of the Week
This thing absolutely rules. Also want to congratulate China Bob on scoring a similarly sweet Badger jacket.
Alabama won another National Championship last week so of course there was complaining from non-Alabama fans about how boring it all is and the usual worries about the trouble college football is in because of it.
The Badger’s head coach even went on the record to talk about the struggles they face trying to compete:
"It's tough. The thing that marks those teams is depth, and you have to recruit to match that. We certainly try. We tell a kid to come to our school and he'll have a chance to beat the top teams. But he says, 'I can go to those schools now and win. I've only got four years.' A lot of people wonder how they keep winning. I'll tell you: every guy at every position is worried about the guy behind him. Every starter wants to have a good game because he knows he won't be playing the next week if he doesn't. We have the same kind of competition here. At offensive guard."
Whoops, that’s not Paul Chryst in 2021 that’s Badger coach John Jardine in 1973 talking about Ohio State and Michigan.
We’ve been worried about the level playing field thing for a while.
People have been talking about this for 100 years because there isn’t an easy solution that gives 125 teams a legitimate chance at a National Championship.
Having everyone end the season in pre-determined Bowl Games and then voting on the best team brought more diversity in teams but was highly unsatisfying. So we came up with ways to match the perceived two best teams in a final game. People hated that so they added another layer of games, which just further demonstrated the talent divide in college football, and here we are today.
The Badgers best chance at a National Championship was in 1993. Had they not put up the stinker against Minnesota and Schnetzky makes the FG against Ohio State they would have been one of two undefeated teams that year along with Nebraska. No idea how that all would have played out with a really really good one-loss Florida State team, but the Badgers were a potentially a couple of plays away from playing for a Championship.
To get back to that being that close to a National Championship now, the Badgers would have to go through a full season with 0 or 1 loss, then beat Ohio State on a neutral field, then beat a top-4 team on a neutral field to then get another top 4 team for the title. Want to make it an 8 team playoff? Add in another game against a top 10 team.
Since you can’t schedule your way into a “level playing field” you have to turn elsewhere. We already have a model for how to do this and we see it every few years when the NCAA puts a team on probation. Scholarship reductions, fines and limits on recruiting visits do the trick.
Scholarship reductions have the most impact. The Badgers program rise coincided with the NCAA’s decision to go from 105 to 85 scholarships beginning in 1992. More recently, Ohio State and Penn State getting hit with reductions knocked them down for a couple years and helped Michigan State and Wisconsin run the Big Ten. When the NCAA wants to make a college football teams worse, they can do it.
This isn’t really practical of course. Schools would go crazy at a staggered scholarship system based on record. Reducing everyone from 85 to 70 scholarships would take away Division 1 scholarships from about 2,000 kids, all to - have different uniforms to watch on a Monday in January? Better TV ratings? Revenue sharing or recruiting restrictions based on record would similarly be non-starters and probably illegal. And on and on.
I liked this idea:
This would never happen as it would be a complete change to college football as we know it, but dividing the 125 FBS teams into two or three Divisions and letting each have their own playoff would be pretty fun. They can all meet for a full day of Championship games on a Saturday in January.
I’m imagining something like High School football with multiple divisions. Bored with Bama vs Clemson again? We have Wisconsin vs Washington and Cincinnati vs Memphis as the under-cards. With 3 divisions and 8 teams in each playoff bracket, we’d have 24 teams playing for something to end the year. I’d enjoy the hell out of this.
Again, would never happen and deciding who is in what division would be a absolute nightmare, but fun to think about.
That’ll do it for this week, thanks again for reading and as always feel free to @ or DM on Twitter, reply to this email or show up at my house with any comments or Newsletter ideas/topics. Go Badgers.