I have just been considering the 15 years of Badger football since the 1993 breakthrough season, and I'm a bit astounded. First look at how the Badgers
have done in overall record relative to our Big Ten peers:
Ohio State: 149-38-1 .795
Michigan: 138-48 .742
Wisconsin: 128-56-4 .691
Penn State: 125-58 .683
Iowa: 99-80-1 .553
Purdue: 96-82-3 .539
Michigan State: 86-92-1 .483
Northwestern: 80-96-1 .455
Minnesota: 79-98 .446
Illinois: 67-105-1 .390
Indiana: 62-109 .363
Ohio State's record is unreal, but look at ours--just a couple of wins short of .700! If we'd had a .691 winning percentage throughout our football
history, we'd be among the top ten teams all-time, that's how good the past 15 seasons have been.
To put this into context, I decided to go back from 1993 to see how many seasons it took to amass 128 wins and 56 losses.
Losses: Back to the last three games of 1986 (losses to Minnesota, OSU and MSU), so 6 seasons + 3 games.
Wins: Back to the last game of the 1961 season (win over Minnesota), so 31 seasons + 1 game.
That's right. In just 15 seasons we've won as many games as in the previous 31, plus 1. I was a junior in high school during the 1961 season. JFK
was a new President. And from then all the way through 1992 the Badgers won just as many games as they have in the past 15 seasons. That takes us from Milt
Bruhn, through John Coatta, John Jardine, Dave McClain, Jim Hilles, Don Morton, and Barry's first three seasons. Just wow!
Meanwhile, the losses piled up pretty quickly. All it took was Barry's first three years and Morton's three, plus the last three games under Hilles.
If this isn't the Golden Age of Badger football, I don't know when it could have been (and, yes, Padre, I know all about Phil King).
NOTE: I miscounted our losses by 1 and had some other minor errors, so had to make some slight changes above. Naturally, after doing this by hand I found a
convenient site that will make these calculations for you (presumably they have correct data):
http://football.stassen.com/records/







