USA TODAY greeted the end of the 2019 college football season with a full set of grades for all 130 Football Bowl Subdivision programs. Analyst Paul Myerberg studied the whole landscape of college football and rendered his assessments of every team.
While you reflect on the grade Myerberg gave to Wisconsin, and then compare that grade to other programs in the Big Ten and across the country, it is worth reflecting on an aspect of the Rose Bowl, as we conclude our occasional series on this game before letting it go.
(THANK GOD, some of you are saying. We know that continuing to reflect on losses isn’t the most fun thing, but a prestigious bowl game, win OR lose, is an important January reflection topic. By March, it’s on to spring ball and the next season, but in the first few weeks of January, how could the Rose Bowl not continue to be a point of study and examination? We all wish the Rose Bowl was a victory and not a defeat, but the fact that the Badgers lost shouldn’t make this game less of a point of focus. Moving on…)
The final point to make on this game — in connection with USA TODAY’s final grade for Wisconsin’s season — is that the HOW of a game matters as much as the WHAT in a few specific ways. It is true that winning a game (the WHAT) matters more than the way in which that game was won (the HOW). Every coach alive would rather win ugly (as Oregon’s Mario Cristobal did in the Rose Bowl) than lose a pretty game.
Yet, when comparing losses and grading a team based on a full season of results, it occurs to me that the way in which a team loses games should have some bearing on a final grade for that team.
As a historical point of comparison, the 1963 Rose Bowl — also a Granddaddy Wisconsin lost — was and is a college football classic. That is an iconic game. Wisconsin’s loss magnified the program rather than reducing its stature. The 2020 Rose Bowl did no such thing. Wisconsin had a game in its grasp. It outplayed Oregon most of the day. Turnovers, however, got in the way. The HOW of a loss was as bad as the loss itself.
Reasonable people can and will disagree, but if I graded the Badgers for 2019, the fact that they let the Rose Bowl slip away — as opposed to losing in a classic game (akin to 1963 or to the 2012 Rose Bowl against Oregon) — would influence my grade. Wisconsin played Ohio State well in the Big Ten Championship Game. UW’s brilliant first half makes the loss less of a diminishment of the Badgers and much more an elevation of a great Ohio State team. The Rose Bowl was different from the Big Ten title game.
The way in which Wisconsin lost is connected to the season-long grade I would personally give to the Badgers. That’s just me.
Is it the same for you, or not? Reasonable people can disagree.