Wisconsin Football: Badgers Should be Rose Bowl Bound

We won’t know for sure until we see the final rankings, but the Wisconsin Football team should be going to the Rose Bowl over Penn State.

A win last night over Ohio State and this wouldn’t even be a question. We would know for certain that the Wisconsin Football team would be heading to Pasadena to play in the Rose Bowl. Heck, there was even some discussion that they could have made the College Football Playoff with a win, although highly unlikely.

However, despite taking an early lead and giving the Buckeyes a run that they hadn’t had all season, Ohio State’s talent was just too much to over come. Now with Ohio State representing the Big Ten in the College Football Playoff, the next highest ranked team from the conference will play in the Rose Bowl. Prior to the Championship game, Wisconsin was ranked 8th and Penn State was ranked 10th, which means we are left wondering how the final rankings will shake out given the Badgers loss on Saturday night.

But in my opinion, this isn’t much of a debate at all. It should be the Wisconsin Badgers playing in Pasadena. And since these two teams didn’t play each other head-to-head this season, we have to look at some other criteria.

For one, before the Big Ten Championship, both Wisconsin and Penn State had two conference losses, so it’s not as if one team had a huge advantage over the other in that category. However, Wisconsin did have three top-25 wins compared to just two for Penn State, and the Badgers Strength of Schedule ranked as the fourth toughest in all of college football while Penn State’s ranked eighth. So not huge differences by any means, but they are differences in Wisconsin’s favor.

And sure, now the Badgers have three conference losses after the Championship game, but can the committee really penalize them in the rankings for playing an extra game against the No. 1 team in the country? I sure hope not. Not to mention that despite the loss, Wisconsin had Ohio State on the ropes and led deep into the third quarter which is something no team has done all season long. Without a doubt, they have shown that they are deserving of this Rose Bowl bid.

Lastly, and this is just pure speculation on my part, but the committee has been kind over the years to the losers of Conference Championship games. So I highly doubt that they would have ranked Wisconsin ahead of Penn State if they weren’t already leaning towards sending them to the Rose Bowl, as long as nothing catastrophic happened in the Big Ten Championship. Which it didn’t.

Ranking Wisconsin ahead of Penn State when they were expected by many to lose, only to put Penn State ahead of them a week later and punishing the Badgers for a Conference Championship loss, would be the committee setting themselves up for failure. But in the end, who knows for sure?

Luckily, we won’t have to wait too long to see where the Wisconsin Football team ends up during the Bowl season, but without getting too far ahead of myself, I smell roses!