After reinstating their fall season earlier this month the Wisconsin Badgers and the rest of the Big Ten are back in national polls and power rankings with the season now less than a month away.
One of those rankings is ESPN senior writer Chris Low’s college football power rankings for Week 3, one which now has Badgers in at No. 12, the same ranking they had in the original AP Poll before the season was put on hold.
Here’s what Low had to say about Wisconsin’s 2020 unit:
“Consistency and Wisconsin football have been synonymous under Paul Chryst. In his five seasons in Madison, the Badgers have won 10 or more games in four of those campaigns. The formula for the most part will stay the same in 2020: beating teams up on defense. Even though linebackers Zack Baun and Chris Orr are gone, Wisconsin returns just about everybody else on defense from a year ago and should be just as good, if not better, against the run after finishing sixth nationally a year ago.”
The other Big Ten teams included in the rankings are Ohio State at No. 2, Penn State at No. 9, Michigan at No. 16 and Minnesota at No. 21.
For what it’s worth Paul Chryst’s team is ranked ahead of 2-0 Miami and many other 1-0 teams including Oklahoma State, North Carolina and Cincinnati. In a weird year for weekly rankings the Badgers are still getting national love even though they haven’t yet taken the field.
The team will open their season on October 24 at home against the Illinois Fighting Illini.