Building A Rivalry: Wisconsin Football vs. Indiana

“They better get season tickets right now because before long, they probably won’t be able to.”

Barry Alvarez’s statement during his introductory 1990 press conference announcing him as the head football coach of the University of Wisconsin was viewed as either bold visionary or complete buffoonery. After all, UW was coming off five consecutive losing seasons, was a combined 6-27 in the three seasons under previous head coach Don Morton and was a program that had its fans giving away tickets to the 1989 season opener against No.3 Miami (spoiler, UW lost 51-3).

It’s likely that many fans thought Alvarez was in over his head when the Badgers went 1-10 his first season, but the groundwork was being laid that season for what has been – for the most part – 30 years of success.

Starting with Alvarez’s 16 seasons (1990-2005) and extending to Bret Bielema’s seven years (‘06-‘12), Gary Andersen’s brief tenure (‘13-‘14) and, now, Paul Chryst (‘15-present), Wisconsin has been one of the more successful programs in the Big Ten. The program has won six conference championships, been to seven Rose Bowls and won 15 bowl games. Most importantly, the Badgers have either swung momentum in Big Ten series, completely dominating conference teams or closed the gap against some of the league’s heavyweights.

To understand how impressive Wisconsin’s run of success has been in the Big Ten, BadgerBlitz will examine UW’s series against 11 Big Ten opponents, looking at where it was and how it has evolved over four different Badgers coaches (Note: for this exercise, we are not including UW’s conference games against Maryland and Rutgers. The Badgers are 3-0 against each school and have outscored them a combined 137-71 in those six games).

Today, we examine UW’s series against the Indiana Hoosiers.

Unlike many of Wisconsin’s Big Ten series, the Badgers never seemed to have much of a problem with Indiana. The Badgers won seven of the first eight games when the series began in 1907 and didn’t lose consecutive games until the 1967 and 1968 (IU won the Big Ten and went to the Rose Bowl in ’67). But as the 1980s ended and the 90s began, Indiana took control of the series.

Alvarez’s teams struggled against Indiana when the Hoosiers were on their sustain level of success. The Hoosiers made six bowl games under head coach Bill Mallory from 1986-93 with UW not beating those teams until that ’93 season (1-6). Alvarez’s teams went 7-5 against the Hoosiers, including an embarrassing 63-32 loss in Madison in 2001 (the most points IU had scored against UW).

But starting with a victory in Alvarez’s final season (’05), Wisconsin – under the direction of Bielema, Andersen and Chryst – hasn’t messed around. The Badgers’ current 10-game winning streak is the longest in the series and UW is winning by an average of 35.9 points. Of those 10 games, only one (31-28 in ’09) was decided by fewer than 17 points.

It’s hard to pick one turning point in a rivalry that Wisconsin has mostly controlled. The ’93 win halted a five-game losing streak while the 41-24 victory in ’05 started the current run. But to emphasize how big of gap there has been between the two schools, look no further than the 83-20 victory at Camp Randall in 2010. That point total – created by UW scoring on all 12 of its possessions - matched the highest scoring total by a team in a Big Ten conference game since Ohio State's 83-21 victory over Iowa in 1950. For the Badgers, it was the most points since an 85-0 win in 1915 over in-state rival Marquette.

After seeing Indiana yearly from 2005 to 2013, Wisconsin has faced the Hoosiers just once in the last six years (a 45-17 victory in Bloomington in ’17), victim of the conference twice being realigned and the two teams in different divisions. That is slated to change this September when the Badgers will open the season hosting the Hoosiers, the first time UW has opened the season against a Big Ten opponent since 1982. Now coached by Indiana native Tom Allen, the Hoosiers have played better football over the past three years and went 8-5 last year, the most wins by the program since 1993.

Wisconsin’s overall record vs Indiana pre-Alvarez: 25-13-2

Wisconsin’s record vs. the Hoosiers since 1990: 16-5

The Alvarez Years: 7-5

The Bielema Years: 7-0

The Andersen Years: 1-0

The Chryst Years: 1-0