The world has been brought to a standstill by the coronavirus. The college football realm has also been brought to a halt. Life, literally and figuratively, has moved a lot more slowly with people confined to their homes and travel being a lot more limited than it was a few weeks ago. The NCAA Tournament has been canceled. Conference tournaments were stopped before their quarterfinal and semifinal rounds. This larger reality — and notion — of everything stopping in place has pervaded our experience.
It is fitting, then, that in a new preseason college football poll, Wisconsin hasn’t moved at all.
The Badgers checked in at No. 18 in the latest USA TODAY preseason top 25 college football poll, released on Wednesday. If you are looking for any kind of news in this poll, we can jump in and tell you exactly what the news value is in this new release: Very simply, Wisconsin hasn’t budged.
The Badgers were also No. 18 in USA TODAY’s “way too early” preseason top 25 poll released on January 14, over two months ago. What is worth saying, then, is that when looking at the limited amount of spring practice activity, combined with coaching changes across the country, in addition to transfers and recruiting developments — anything which would change the personnel on coaching staffs or rosters — the people evaluating the country’s top teams saw no reason to adjust Wisconsin’s position in the top 25.
There is a good news-bad news dynamic here: Wisconsin didn’t drop… and Wisconsin didn’t rise. This could be a commentary on the reality that Wisconsin is one of the more identifiable programs in the country, a program in which “what you see is generally what you get.” Wisconsin is a program which isn’t as likely to wildly fluctuate from one extreme to another, given the program’s steadiness and consistency. That is a reasonable explanation for UW’s lack of poll movement.
A more skeptical read of this new poll is that UW isn’t creating reasons for pollsters to upgrade the Badgers. Questions about the 2020 roster aren’t being answered, which — of course — is something Wisconsin couldn’t control. Not being able to have a normal spring process has limited the ability of evaluators to change their minds about the Badgers, and — for that matter — any other program which didn’t get an extended spring.