Building A Rivalry: Wisconsin Football vs. Northwestern

“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).

Many fans likely 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 Northwestern WIldcats.

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The Badgers had winning records against just four conference schools entering the 90s (minimum five meetings). Of those schools, UW beat nobody more than the Wildcats. After losing the first game in the series in 1890 in Milwaukee, the Badgers went 14-0-4 from 1891-1921. When a 4-13 stretch followed, UW responded by going 14-3 from 1949-65.

Where the series tipped in Wisconsin’s favor was from 72-89, as the Badgers won 13 straight games in the series. The Badgers only had six winning seasons over that stretch, but the Wildcats didn’t have any and only two seasons with at least four wins (that included a six-season stretch where they went a combined 3-62-1).

While Alvarez was rebuilding Wisconsin, Gary Barnett was building the Wildcats. That led to some back-and-forth between the two programs. During Alvarez’s tenure, UW’s longest winning streak was only three games (’97-99) and the longest losing streak was two twice. One set of those back-to-back losses were two of the more painful Big Ten setbacks under Alvarez – a 47-44 double-overtime home loss in 2000 as the nation’s seventh-ranked team and a 16-7 defeat in Evanston in 2003. Equally disappointing could be the ’05 team’s 51-48 loss at Ryan Field (Northwestern scored on seven straight possessions and finished with a school-record 674 yards of total offense).

Bielema only coached against Pat Fitzgerald three times in his seven years in Madison, the most memorable being Wisconsin’s 70-23 victory in 2010 that clinched the first of three straight Big Ten championships. However, UW let a winnable game slip away in Evanston in 2009, a trend that would continue with Andersen. UW dominated No.19 Northwestern, 35-6, in 2013 in Madison but lost as the 17th-ranked team, 20-14, a year later. Melvin Gordon rushed for 259 yards in that game but Tanner McEvoy and Joel Stave combined to throw four interceptions.

A controversial home loss started the Chryst era, but the Badgers broke through with a 21-7 win in 2016, the program’s first win at Ryan Field since 1999. Since then, the home team has won the last three meetings.

The turning point of the season came in ’72 when the Badgers started their 12-game winning streak, but the win in ’97 was also important. Wisconsin gave a winnable game away in ’96 when they had the ball and the lead with less than a minute to play until Dayne fumbled near midfield with a minute to play. Northwestern threw the game-winning touchdown pass two minutes later.

The script flipped a year later. After another UW fumbled snap gave Northwestern the ball, the Wildcats drove to the Badgers’ 4 before fumbling the ball right back. With just over a minute remaining Wisconsin quarterback Mike Samuel led the team down the field to set up a game-winning 48-yard field goal in a game with 708 yards of total offense, six lead changes and six lost fumbles.

This is one of the few conference series that was fairly lopsided before but has significantly tightened in the last three decades. It’s a credit to Northwestern get Barnett, Randy Walker and Fitzgerald to build some consistency within a program that had no tradition at all. Before 1994, Northwestern had played in one bowl game (winning the ’48 Rose Bowl). Since Barnett came, Northwestern has been to 14 bowls.

How close has this series been? Since 1985, Wisconsin holds a narrow 15-14 advantage. Because of that reason, one could argue that the Wildcats are the Badgers’ biggest rivals in the Big Ten West Division.

Wisconsin’s overall record vs Northwestern pre-Alvarez: 47-25-5

Wisconsin’s record vs. the Wildcats since 1990: 13-11

The Alvarez Years: 7-7

The Bielema Years: 2-1

The Andersen Years: 1-1

The Chryst Years: 3-2