Justice.
The Wisconsin Badgers were not punished for playing a 13th game. They weren’t punished for losing to the mighty Ohio State Buckeyes. They were given an appropriate reward, a Rose Bowl berth on January 1, 2020, against the Oregon Ducks. How big a deal is this for UW? Very big.
The Wisconsin Badgers had not made the Rose Bowl since the 2012 season and the January 2013 game against Stanford. That game, appropriately enough, was coached by Barry Alvarez, the paterfamilias and architect of Wisconsin football as we have come to know it.
Much as Michigan icon Bo Schembechler (who, like Alvarez, was a football coach-turned-athletic director at his school) fired basketball coach Bill Frieder before the 1989 NCAA Tournament, due to Frieder taking the head coaching job at Arizona State, Alvarez had the same attitude seven years ago. When Bret Bielema accepted the open head coaching job at Arkansas in December of 2012, Alvarez would not have Bielema coach the Badgers in the 2013 Rose Bowl against Stanford. Alvarez piloted the team, in a scenario which would be replicated one more time in the future. Alvarez manned the sidelines for the 2015 Outback Bowl win over Auburn after Gary Andersen bailed on the UW program in the infamous 2014 Big Ten Championship Game against Ohio State.
Wisconsin, it can fairly be said, is and has been the second-best Big Ten football program in the decade which is about to end. Ohio State – which has now beaten the Badgers in three different Big Ten title games spanning six college football seasons – is the obvious number one. Michigan State had its moments and won two Big Ten titles, but Wisconsin won three, if you emphasize the Rose Bowl representative in the conference before the College Football Playoff began in 2014. Wisconsin, not Michigan State, represented the Big Ten in Pasadena in the 2010 season. The Badgers, not the Spartans, faced TCU in the 2011 game in the Arroyo Seco. Yes, Wisconsin is reasonably the second-best Big Ten program of the 2010s.
Because Ohio State so regularly stands in the Badgers’ way, it is accepted – not approved of, but accepted (there is a difference between acceptance and approval) – that Ohio State will normally represent the Big Ten in the playoff. Therefore, the Rose Bowl is generally the goal Wisconsin aspires to. Making the Rose Bowl remains hugely significant, cherished and valuable for Wisconsin in a way which doesn’t apply to Ohio State. If the Buckeyes are in the Rose Bowl (as they were last season), it means they’re not in the playoff while an SEC team or Notre Dame is playing for the brass ring. Buckeye fans hate that. More precisely, they hate that at a level Wisconsin fans don’t… because the Rose Bowl simply isn’t a consolation prize for the Badgers. They don’t inhabit the same context Ohio State currently occupies.
This explains why the Rose Bowl is a big deal.
Wisconsin will be overjoyed to head to Pasadena in the last week of December and play on New Year’s Day in the shadows of the San Gabriel Mountains.