Which teams in Wisconsin football history would have made the playoffs in the new 12-team format?

This season, the College Football Playoff is expanding to a 12-team format, building on its previous four-team arrangement established in 2014.

The widened playoff pool allows for more schools to qualify for the postseason and relieves some stress throughout the regular season. Teams that have previously been eliminated for losing two games now can squeak into the postseason with three or four losses.

The University of Wisconsin could have benefited from the 12-team playoff format throughout its history. Since 1990, nine Badgers squads finished their seasons with a national ranking as low as No. 11 and as high as No. 4.

More: The most amazing play of the Wisconsin football season in 2023 wouldn’t count in 2024

After 2014, the prevailing rankings switched from the Associated Press to the College Football Playoff rankings.

What if the expanded playoff system had been established in the 1990s? Who would Wisconsin have matched up against? Could the Badgers have made a run to a national championship game? Is this all just an excuse to reminisce on previous great Badgers teams? Let’s find out.

Barry Alvarez caps a breakthrough season with a victory over Michigan State in Tokyo and a berth in the Rose Bowl in 1993. Celebrating with him is one of his first recruits, fullback Mark Montgomery.

1993

With 1990 as an arbitrary cutoff, the 1993 Badgers would be the first team to qualify under the new CFP rules. Head coach Barry Alvarez completely revitalized the program in his fourth season, taking a team that had finished 1-10 in 1990 and flipping it into a 10-1-1 juggernaut.

UW finished No. 6 in the last AP poll following a 21-16 victory over No. 18 UCLA in the Rose Bowl.

Alvarez’s first team with a positive win-loss record had one blemish. It fell 28-21 to an unranked Minnesota team that finished as the third-worst team in the Big…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/teams-wisconsin-football-history-made-104534626.html

Author : Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Publish date : 2024-07-15 10:45:34

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