We already wrote about the 2011 Big Ten Championship Game here at Badgers Wire, recalling the first time the Big Ten moved to two divisions and played a neutral-site conference championship showdown in Indianapolis. Russell Wilson starred in that game, the biggest win of Wisconsin’s 2011 season. The victory sent the Badgers to the Rose Bowl, where they played the Oregon Ducks.
Hey, that sounds familiar. Wisconsin will do that all over again when it reunites with Oregon in the 2020 Rose Bowl.
On the road to Pasadena, Wisconsin needed to beat Michigan State in Indianapolis. Before that, however, the other especially great moment from the 2011 UW regular season was Nebraska’s first-ever conference game as a member of the Big Ten.
Nebraska lost to Oklahoma in the 2010 Big 12 Championship Game. Nebraska’s next conference game was in Camp Randall Stadium roughly 10 months later, on October 1, 2011. This wasn’t an ease-your-way-into-the-Big-Ten opener for Nebraska, against Illinois or pre-Jeff-Brohm Purdue. This was Wisconsin, the Big Ten co-champion from 2010 which was reloading and would eventually put two players — Russell Wilson and Montee Ball — in the top 10 of the Heisman Trophy voting for the 2011 season.
This was a sexy game played under the lights in prime time. How would Nebraska answer the moment, and how would Wisconsin welcome the new member of the Big Ten?
After 17 and a half minutes, Nebraska had to like its chances. The Huskers survived the early storm and took a 14-7 lead with 12:45 left before halftime. It was reasonable at that time to expect a closely fought game. Nebraska was the runner-up in the Big 12 in 2010. This was not the NU program we see today under Scott Frost; the Huskers weren’t an elite team, but they were very good at the start of the decade.
In many ways, this game contained powerful symbolism as a harbinger of what was to come: The roof caved in.
Wisconsin scored 20 points in the second quarter to take a 27-14 lead. Nebraska quarterback Taylor Martinez threw three interceptions to fuel the Badgers’ surge. Wilson, in the first really big game of his Wisconsin career after transferring from North Carolina State, didn’t throw a ton of passes (20), but the ones he completed were big gainers. Wilson’s 14 completions went for 255 yards, or just over 18 yards per completion. Wilson hit Jared Abbrederis on a 36-yard touchdown pass, and Nick Toon on a 46-yard scoring strike, to blow the game open. Before the third quarter was over, Wisconsin had built a 41-14 lead. The Badgers had scored 34 straight points. Nebraska’s Big Ten opener had turned into a clear and vivid sign of what was to come in the remainder of the decade for the Cornhuskers.
In the fourth quarter of the blowout — the final score was 48-17 — Wisconsin fans serenaded Nebraska with a simple chant. It didn’t need to be any more complicated:
“BIG TEN FOOT-BALL! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP-CLAP-CLAP!”
“BIG TEN FOOT-BALL! CLAP CLAP! CLAP-CLAP-CLAP!”
That was a mic-drop moment for Wisconsin football, part of a very successful decade for the Badgers on the gridiron.