By Blake Dowson
In a question for Wisconsin’s Dare Ogunbowale at the Big Ten media days in Chicago last week, a reporter asked the new running back about the team’s “murderers’ row” of a schedule this season.
“Murderers’ row?” he said. “I haven’t heard that one yet, that’s clever.”
The Badgers’ schedule has been discussed quite a bit this summer, and it’s been called by a lot of names — much along the same lines as murderers’ row.
Ogunbowale and Company start the season with a ho-hum, not-too-exciting matchup against LSU on national television. If that is not enough to get the hair on the back of your neck to stand straight up, the game will be played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay.
After the grueling battle that no doubt will occur against the 230-pound wrecking ball Leonard Fournette and the Bayou Bengals, Wisconsin gets Akron and Georgia State before diving headfirst into the most brutal Big Ten schedule of any of the 14 teams in the conference.
Back-to-back road games at Michigan State and Michigan start the Badgers off, followed by (what is sure to be a well-earned) bye week, before they take on Ohio State in their home Big Ten opener.
A week after their dance with the Buckeyes, the Badgers travel to Kinnick to take on the Hawkeyes, the following week they get Nebraska at home, and the week after that, they travel to Northwestern.
Those games are all in a row. Those are not simply the toughest games on the Badgers’ schedule; that six-game stretch is real, and when the LSU game to start the year is included in that, conspiracies on who in the scheduling department hates Wisconsin do not fall on deaf ears.
“It’s tough. We say this a lot, but we see it as an opportunity,” Ogunbowale said. “It’s a big chance for the program to do some big things this season. We’re looking forward to it.”
Right. That’s what Ogunbowale is supposed to say at media days. He can’t get in front of the microphone and say he’s shaking in his boots because of the schedule his team faces this season.
There is a very real possibility that Wisconsin will only be favored in two of its first nine games.
That certainly is daunting. And nary a reporter would have cried foul if any of the Wisconsin representatives at media days had said the schedule was unfair.
Unfair wasn’t the word of the day, though, with the Badgers. It was instead one of the words Ogunbowale mentioned on numerous occasions, as well as linebacker Vince Biegel.
“We have plenty of opportunities to prove ourselves,” Biegel said. “We obviously have the whole season ahead of us to put ourselves in a position that we want to be in at the end of the year.”
Head coach Paul Chryst, would you like to chime in?
“It’s a heck of a challenge,” he said. “I believe with great challenges come great opportunities.”
If you are a glass-half-full person, then Wisconsin certainly does have an opportunity to do something special this season.
Those same glass-half-full people will probably point out that Wisconsin opened 2015 in a game versus Alabama, so they have experienced one of those huge opening weekend games.
Glass-half-empty folks will probably say something along the lines of, “OK, stop scheduling the best college football teams in the country when you have sketchy quarterback play.”
Which brings us to the fact that longtime quarterback Joel Stave has finally left Madison.
Stave did not play well for the Badgers a season ago, so much so that some recruits took to Twitter to say the Badgers would never be a good team with Stave throwing the ball.
The continued playing time of Stave throughout the year sort of had the feel of a veteran Major League Baseball player who is hitting about .215 in the everyday lineup because he is making $20 million a year. Wisconsin had invested a lot of Stave, so they felt as though they had to play him.
But alas, he is gone, and a quarterback battle ensues.
“I’m excited with Bart Houston and Alex Hornibrook,” Chryst said of his quarterback situation. “They’ve done a great job to this point of not worrying about the common question of who is going to be the starter and the quarterback competition. But spending their time trying to work on and improve in the things in their control. And they’ve done a great job this summer.”
The winner of the battle gets LSU in the opener and then gets to face murderers’ row after that. What an opportunity.