[lawrence-newsletter]When I asked Wisconsin 2021 SDE commit Darryl Peterson about his personal and team-oriented goals for his career as a Badger, the answer was simple: “I want to win a national championship in Madison.”
The fact of the matter is that living up to the lofty goal of a national championship is easier said than done at a program that has never been able to “get over the hump,” as Peterson put it.
Another fact, however, is that Wisconsin has never had a recruiting class ranked as highly as the 2021 class in its history. After the addition of four-star DE T.J. Bollers, the group is ranked as the No. 12 overall class according to 247Sports. The class still also has room to grow in the coming months.
It is no secret that the major hump that Wisconsin has failed to get over in recent years is the Ohio State Buckeyes, a school that Peterson grew up rooting for in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. The Badgers have not bested the Buckeyes since 2010, and their most recent defeat came in the 2019 Big Ten Championship Game.
Ironically, the Ohio native’s best memories of college football as a kid came when he was watching legendary Buckeye teams beat up on the Big Ten. “My favorite game of all time was when Ohio State played Virginia Tech in week one (2015). Braxton Miller was there, Michael Thomas was there. That was my favorite college football game ever.”
Peterson’s focus, along with the rest of his class, has turned towards getting Wisconsin over the Ohio State hump. His change of focus also has also led to a necessary change of room decor. “I was facetiming (Wisconsin Outside Linebackers Coach) Coach April the day I committed, and there was an Ohio State poster on my wall. I said ‘look man! I’m taking the poster down.'”
When asked about whether or not the class of 2021 talks about their national championship aspirations as a group, Peterson told me that it was a major topic of conversation in the class of 2021 group chat. “We talk about it all the time man. We think we have the ability to be that class that gets us over the hump. That was the deciding factor in me coming here. We are super close to winning a Big Ten Championship, and more times that not the Big Ten Champion is in the College Football Playoff.”
.@_DPETERSON10 on goals for the class of 2021: "Our goal is a national championship. I wanna win a national championship in Madison and everybody in that group chat does to." #Badgers
— Asher Low (@alow_33) June 15, 2020
The lofty goals are shared among the 2021 class as a whole. Four-star DE commit T.J. Bollers echoed the same sentiment when I asked him about his goals in Madison. “I’m coming to Madison to win a natty,” the Iowa native told me.
Even though there is still over a year to go until this class plays a college football game together, constant communication in their group chat and countless Zoom calls have made them brothers. The power of technology is helping them to build a family even before meeting each other in person. 2021 QB commit Deacon Pe’a Hill told me that this class feels like “family” already. “We all sometimes hop on Zoom to talk to each other. The group chat is active every single day. We are already becoming really good friends. It is just going to be natural when we all get to Wisconsin together,” said Pe’a Hill.
The family that has already been created is looking to add members. Pe’a Hill loves helping in the recruiting process, as do many other members of the class of 2021. The Santa Barbara native told me that recruiting is something he truly loves doing. “It is like you’re trying to get somebody to join your family. We have our Wisconsin ’21 group chat and if we find a recruit that we need to get or a coach tells us we are going after this guy then we will send his info into the group chat and we will all go after him as much as possible.”
The close knit bond that this class already has off the field is setting them up for a seamless transition when they do hit the Camp Randall turf. They are setting their goals high, but after talking with so many members of the family it is clear that this group has the potential to help Wisconsin reach new heights.