Wisconsin leads the nation in this rushing stat according to Fox CFB

On Saturday afternoon, Fox College Football tweeted out the rushing leaders of every season from the last decade and an interesting trend emerged.

Wisconsin had three rushing leaders in the last ten years starting with Montee Ball with 1,923 rushing yards in 2011, Melvin Gordon with 2,587 rushing yards in 2014, and lastly Jonathan Taylor with 2,194 rushing yards in 2018.

On Saturday afternoon, Fox College Football tweeted out the rushing leaders of every season from the last decade and an interesting trend emerged.

Wisconsin had three rushing leaders in the last ten years starting with Montee Ball with 1,923 rushing yards in 2011, Melvin Gordon with 2,587 rushing yards in 2014, and lastly Jonathan Taylor with 2,194 rushing yards in 2018.

As impressive as this is, I have to wonder what this list would look like if it was only power five schools that were included in the rankings. Although the rushing feat from Rashaad Penny of 2,248 yards in 2017 was impressive at San Diego State, it’s hard to justify those numbers against the not so tough competition of the Mountain West Conference versus what Jonathan Taylor did against Big Ten opponents. Taylor only had 1,977 yards in 2017, but those yards are a lot harder to earn against teams like Ohio State than Colorado State.

Jonathan Tayor was close to another rushing title in 2019 as well, finishing only 91 yards behind Chuba Hubbard of Oklahoma State. In short, Wisconsin has been pretty close to having five rushing leaders in the last ten years.

Despite actually having three rushing titles, Wisconsin still leads the nation in rushing leaders from the last decade, which shows the program’s commitment to running the ball and finding great running backs. It will be interesting to see who Wisconsin can find to replace Jonathan Taylor this season, but I have no doubt that they can.