The 2017 Wisconsin football season was the winningest season in the history of the program. The Badgers went 13-1 and had one possession late in the fourth quarter against Ohio State to win the Big Ten and make the College Football Playoff. The 1993 and 1998 Wisconsin teams reached great heights. Those teams won the Rose Bowl and fulfilled the childhood dreams of Badger fans everywhere. The 2017 team, though, has “13-1,” a standard worthy of an elite program, a top-tier program, a program which takes a back seat to no one. In 2017, the pieces all came together — and fit together — for Wisconsin. The whole season was a joyride. Even the loss to Ohio State represented a game in which the Badgers played at or above expectations. They didn’t play below expectations in that game.
Several highlights emerge from that season. One of the more prominent ones was the Michigan game.
Remember that in 2016, Michigan came very close to beating Ohio State, winning the Big Ten East, and playing Wisconsin for the Big Ten title. Michigan didn’t look like a dominant team — it never has under Jim Harbaugh — but it was very close to achieving all of its goals. Michigan was showing signs of becoming what many people thought it would become under Harbaugh: The 1-B to Ohio State’s 1-A, the second-best program in the Big Ten.
No, Michigan never attained that standard, but at the end of 2016, it was plausible that it could happen. Enter the 2017 Michigan game.
If the 2017 season achieved something for Wisconsin beyond the boatload of wins, another Big Ten West title, the New Year’s Six bowl bid, and the win over Miami in the Orange Bowl, it was this: Wisconsin established itself as the second-best Big Ten program of the decade. It rose above not just Michigan, but also Penn State, which had won the Big Ten a year earlier but did not have the steady record of performance Wisconsin had. Wisconsin was a better team than Penn State this year, in 2019, and the Badgers deserved to beat out the Nittany Lions for the Rose Bowl bid against Oregon.
In 2017, Wisconsin didn’t pulverize Michigan the way the 2019 team did, but in some ways, the Badgers were MORE impressive, not less. Wisconsin took some strong punches from Michigan in the first one and a half quarters of this game two years ago, but they fought back and were dominant in the second half. Wisconsin established unquestioned physical superiority and left no doubt that it was the better team with a stronger program and a more hopeful future.
Nothing suggested or indicated by this 24-10 butt-kicking of Harbaugh has proved to be inaccurate or misguided in the two years since. Wisconsin has maintained the upper hand over Michigan… and Penn State… and every other Big Ten school not named Ohio State. The 2017 Wisconsin season was a dream, and Michigan endured a nightmare at the hands of one of the best Badger teams of all time.