Badgers football 26-27

[Voyageur]

The new version of the Badgers is getting mixed reviews. ESPN is giving them a lot of love. More so than anyone else. Here's their predictor, game by game, for this upcoming season.

• *Week 1: Wisconsin (7.0%) vs. Notre Dame (93.0%)
• Week 2: Wisconsin (99.0%) vs. Western Illinois
• Week 3: Wisconsin (94.7%) vs. Eastern Michigan
• Week 4: Wisconsin (19.7%) at Penn State (80.3%)
• Week 5: Wisconsin (69.3%) vs. Michigan State (30.7%)
• Week 6: IDLE
• Week 7: Wisconsin (55.8%) at UCLA (44.2%)
• Week 8: Wisconsin (23.2%) vs. USC (76.8%)
• Week 9: Wisconsin (27.8%) at Iowa (72.2%)
• Week 10: Wisconsin (72.0%) vs. Rutgers (28.0%)
• Week 11: Wisconsin (53.8%) at Maryland (46.2%)
• Week 12: Wisconsin (61.3%) at Purdue (38.7%)
• Week 13: Wisconsin (68.4%) vs. Minnesota (31.6%)

They're underdogs in only 4 games, which surprises me. For openers, I don't see them as favorites to beat UCLA on their turf. It just doesn't seem to be something that will happen. If their predictions come true, that would put the Badgers at 8-4 which I think would be an amazing year. Padding their stats are the games against Western Illinois, and Eastern Michigan. Not really teams that make your 8-4 standout. A couple of non-conference games like those are look good in the win column but had they chosen middle of the road D-1 caliber teams, I think they'd lose one or two of them.

In addition to not having confidence in winning the UCLA game, I'm going to have to wait to see if they can beat Purdue in Lafayette and beat Minnesota in Madison before I get too high on them as being a decent team. I'm not convinced Fickell has figured it out yet or ever will as the Badger HC.