Just two weeks ago, fans of the Badgers football and men’s basketball teams were riding high. The football team achieved huge victories over Iowa and Minnesota, bracketed around three Thanksgiving week tournament victories by the basketball team in the Bahamas. That was then. Everyone knows what followed: Duke in basketball and, three nights later, Ohio State in football. The 80-70 home loss to the Blue Devils was respectable; the 59-0 loss to the Buckeyes was not. But, on reflection, I think they’re connected. Yes, they were different in scope and lasting import. The basketball loss was an early non-conference game and football was for a Big Ten championship, but they were both examples of what happens when Wisconsin plays one of the very top programs in the country, one swarming with elite, so-called “five-star” athletes. Let me hasten to add that my central point is not negative. It is actually positive, suggesting that fans adjust their expectations. Here is why: In both sports, UW’s coaches do an excellent job of recruiting earnest, coachable young men. While local critics of big-time sports would quibble, athletes at UW appear closer to the model of what the “student athlete” is supposed to represent than basketball players who use programs like those at the University of Kentucky — and Duke — as one-year stopovers on their way to professional basketball. And of course there are the football factories of the Deep South that seem to treat the college game as a creepy form of religion, right down to making sure compliant law enforcement agencies look the other way when athletes break laws. …
Continue Reading: Paul Fanlund: Badgers’ losses to Duke and Ohio State are connected
