As the 2019 season brings to a close another decade of college football, Badgers Wire has been engaged in a series of reflective pieces. “Record Review” is another series examining how the Badgers have fared against the rest of the Big Ten Conference this decade. Next up is an examination of the Badgers’ record against one of the more recent additions to the Big Ten, Nebraska. This is a series Wisconsin has controlled since the Cornhuskers joined the league. Let’s take a look at the numbers.
Using Stassen, Badgers Wire pulled up every result against Nebraska in the 2010s. The vast majority of the meetings between these two teams have taken place since 2011, a direct result of Nebraska’s new Big Ten membership. Prior to the past decade, UW and NU met twice in the 1970s (1973 and ‘74), in which the two schools split, and twice in the 1960s (1965 and ‘66), both Wisconsin losses. Then they also met in 1901 in Milwaukee. So, 2011-2019 represents 64 percent of their total meetings. This decade belonged to Wisconsin against the Cornhuskers.
The Badgers have lost only once since in the decade to Nebraska. That loss came in 2012, and they avenged it by beating the absolute hell out of Nebraska in what has been NU’s only appearance in the Big Ten Championship Game. So, as gut-wrenching as the 30-27 loss was for Wisconsin in the 2012 regular season, beating the Huskers in a conference title game more than made up for it.
If Nebraska head coach Scott Frost has the success he had at UCF, it’s only a matter of time before the Huskers will be competing with Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota for the West Division crown. Yet, Frost hasn’t shown he can move the Nebraska program forward. Wisconsin needs to stay the course and not give ground to a Nebraska program that can recruit with the best of them when the program is firing on all cylinders.
Wisconsin has done a great job of keeping Nebraska quiet and impotent. Maintaining that reality in the 2020s — never giving the Huskers a chance to kick-start their attempt at a revival with an upset of the Badgers — is an important task for UW football.