Now departing

Just read Jim's story that Elijah Hodge, Xavier Harris, and James Stallons will be leaving the football program. None of these things are surprising nor necessarily damaging. Mildly disappointing.

I thought Hodge was going to be the second-best player in his recruiting class, after Beckum. After all, his brother was a stud at Iowa, so why wouldn't he be, too? He was an easy target for frustration as the defense struggled early in the 2007 season, although he did have that big play to end the win over Michigan State.

When he wasn't one of the top six linebackers this year you figured he was done playing from scrimmage. We'll never know how good he would have been had the injuries not caught up with him. Interesting that Bielema gave him a chance to move to fullback but he didn't take it. Nice thing is he's on pace to graduate in May.

Wasn't Harris's nickname "The Savior"? I remember watching him warm up before theh Bowling Green game in Cleveland and thinking that he lookd the part and would play as much as Swan and Hubbard at wideout that year. Guess not. Although a back injury ended his career, don't think it had that much to do with him not playing much before then.

Stallons, from what I understand, didn't put in as much prep time in the classroom or the meeting room to earn more playing time, but if he had he might have gotten on the field last year. With Phillips and Budmayr coming in, he was looking at being squeezed out himself.

Badgers are Champs, after all

So the bowl destination is ... Florida. Again. It beats Christmas in Madison, but I was sort of hoping for Pasadena or New Orleans or Phoenix or Miami. Oh well.

The Champs Sports Bowl it is, set for December 27 against Florida State. My thoughts:

-Love the opponent. Florida State is a brand name in college football, and was arguably the top program of the 1990s. As a kid I was enamored with their uniforms, the mascot, the Tomahawk Chop that Braves fans stole from FSU fans.

What I also love is that they are eminently beatable nowadays. The Seminoles lately have been a shadow of what they were in the '90s, for a variety of reasons. A decline in offensive coaching. The resurgence of in-state rivals Florida and Miami. Off-the-field problems.

Can't say I paid close attention to this year's team, but looking at their results their four losses are respectable: Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Boston College, and Florida.

Their quarterback, Christian Ponder, has thrown more interceptions than touchdowns and has been sacked 17 times, but has run for more than 400 yards. Antone Smith, their leading rusher, is a well-regarded running back. Wide receivers Greg Carr and Preston Parker are also highly thought of, even if neither has more than 40 catches or 500 yards receiving.

-I want to learn more about this Myron Rolle kid. If you've been paying attention, he's the guy who recently was named a Rhodes Scholar, interviewing for it on the day of a game, then flying in to join the team while the game was underway. Great story.

When my brother, dad, and I were hearing about this a couple weeks ago, our shared reaction was "He was a potential Rhodes Scholar and he went to ... Florida State?" Surely Stanford, Northwestern, Vanderbilt could have challenged him more academically. Whatever, good for FSU and good for Rolle.

-Rolle and his teammates had the 13th-best defense in the country this year, yardage-wise. That D is going to be a tough test for the Badger offense, lot of athletes and well-coached.

-As much as Orlando is starting to seem repetitive, and the trip might be a tough sell to Badger fans, going to Florida for the fifth straight year is a good thing. It's a state that Bret Bielema has made a recruiting priority, and we're doing pretty well there lately. Zach Brown. Aaron Henry. Jae McFadden. Elijah Hodge. Eriks Briedis. Anthony Mains. Kevin Claxton. Antonio Fenelus. Xavier Harris. Josh Nettles. Recruits David Gilbert and Conor O'Neill. (Florida State was also reportedly in the mix for O'Neill.)

Florida is an important state for us, and the more we're there, the better. Even if our fans aren't showing up in the usual numbers, you can bet that the family and friends of all those guys above will be in Orlando, and might even bring along some other promising young athletes.

-Even though this trip will be a tough sell, I'm hoping the opponent will be attractive enough to entice Badger fans to make the trip. (Disclosure: I won't be going.)

-This is our seventh straight bowl appearance, the second-longest in the Big Ten behind Ohio State. That's nice.

-Finally, this will be a battle of maligned coaches with the the initials B.B. If we think what Bielema has been going through this year is tough, imagine what it's been like for Bobby Bowden. He's presided over the slow decline of his program while enduring constant talk that he's too old, the game has passed him by. Sort of like Joe Paterno up in our conference.

My take on it is that Bowden really isn't that far off from having his program great again. He still hasn't recovered from Mark Richt leaving for Georgia (or too an extent from Chuck D'Amato leaving for North Carolina State), and putting his boy in charge of the offense didn't go that well. The other part of the downfall, off-field troubles, probably come from taking chances on kids of questionable character in an attempt to keep up with Florida and Miami. Or a run of bad luck. Iron those two things out and Florida State is not far from being golden again.

Hopefully it doesn't start with a win over Wisconsin.

Andy and Bret

The other day on Facebook I got a notification that my brother had changed his profile picture, and since he's been adding pictures of us as little kids lately I thought I'd take a look. But from the thumbnail, it looked like him and someone famous.

Check it out.

Pretty cool. I emailed Andy to ask him about it, and here was his tongue in cheek response:

"Mendota Gridiron Club's annual 'IT Day.' BB and the coaches emailed a bunch of IT people on campus and we sat down with the guys to show them how to use Powerpoint and YouTube. Xavier Harris now loves playing World of WarCraft ..."

And the real story:

"It was actually at a 'rock & roll concert' in Middleton last weekend. Someone spotted BB from like 30 yards away and he was nice enough to let us take a picture with him."

As cool as it must be to be Bret Bielema, it's also got to be challenging. You want to be accommodating to fans like Andy and his buddies, but let's say 25 people come up to him during this concert asking for pictures. Can you ever say no? If you do just once, you come off as a jerk. Suppose that's just the price that comes with living as a celebrity and not being content to be homebound or exceedingly private.

Andy also said they couldn't have their beers in their pictures with the coach, which makes sense -- he doesn't want another Larry Eustachy-esque picture gallery popping up on a message board or in the blogosphere.

Wisconsin-Penn State postgame thoughts

Well, we won't have to worry about rankings or conference races or anything like that for awhile. Maybe I should just move back to Ohio; the two years I lived there, the only two years I've lived outside of Wisconsin since 1983, were Rose Bowl years.

This team reminds me of the 2000 team. High expectations and top five ranking at the start of the year, some turmoil, getting by with some close wins early in the season, then it all snaps. That team had the Shoe Box and a bunch of NFL players; this team had/has a couple of bad seeds and some players who might become NFL players. That team had a four-game losing streak in the middle of the season, and I don't see that, but 4-4 in Big Ten play and a lower-tier bowl is reasonable.

This thought has been popping into my head lately: this team looks poorly coached. But that probably isn't the case, because the same staff did a great job last year (minus the always underrated Henry Mason, and DelVaughn Alexander, his replacement, has done a credible job considering his two starters have gone down). Last year's team got better every week during conference play; this year's team seems to be getting worse. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and blame the injuries, but if we cut down on all the mental errors, we have a shot in this one.

Shaughnessy played well today. He's not dominating, but he's been strong.

Was Royston in for Pleasant? Was it injury related, or performance related? Does it matter?

Injuries to and defections on the front seven have been fatal. As much as we can point at the LBs and DBs missing tackles, today their backs were getting to the second line with a full head of steam, untouched through the line. I don't think those players are worse than they were last year, they're dinged up and the depth behind them is non-existent.

Offensive line play has been okay, not horrible, not terrific.

Xavier Harris made a catch, slightly encouraging.

Really upset that we gave up on the run in the second half. The game was decided four minutes in - why not work on getting a rhythm in the run game rather than racking up desperation passing yards against a semi-prevent and setting Donovan up to get battered?

Penn State has a chance to run the table in the Big Ten, but they won't win it. Good team, but we made them look better than they really are.

Aaron Henry had a nice sack on a blitz, first time I remember seeing him since The Citadel game.

Good catch out of the backfield by Brown. He's not as big an asset as Smith at RB, but he's not a liability either. Smith's absence didn't cost us either of these last two games.

Guessing the shore sheet will show a lot more explosive plays - 20+ yards - yielded by the defense, but there were probably even more plays from 15-19 yards that were just as painful. No one has had to grind out scoring drives this season, the scores come quickly.

PSU's second string QB made a run where Casillas made the tackle about 5-7 yards after he could have. The defense is playing either tentatively or, as stated in the last post, overly aggressive. It's a mental thing as much as anything now. We can talk about the new starters, but guys who played really well last year are struggling, too.

The second half's boring nature allowed me to watch Kentucky-LSU and Boston College-Notre Dame a lot and see Woodson and Ryan. They're good, not wow! good today, but doing what they have to do.

Offensive prediction recap, actual numbers second:
PJ: 23 carries, 29 yards, 1 TD - 19 carries, 75 yards, 1 TD
Donovan: 19-29, 211 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT - 16-29, 220 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
Beckum: 8 catches, 94 yards - 5 catches, 70 yards
Jefferson: 3 catches, 49 yards - 6 catches, 124 yards - great game
Graham: 1 catch, 7 yards, 1 TD - 3 catches, 18 yards, 0 TD

Think I picked up that Musberger will be calling the NASCAR race on ABC tonight - sounds like a premise for an SNL sketch, with Kevin Nealon as Musberger. "Hang on a second - HE'S TAKING TWO NEW TIRES, FOLKS!" I'll skip that.

Badger wide receiver situation

Been doing some thinking on the Badgers' situation at wide receiver without Swan, and I'm not feeling as bad about it as I did at first. That is to take nothing away from Swanny, great player, great story, etc. Here's why:

As predicted before, I see Chryst using Beckum split wide more often, with Jefferson as the second wideout. If he wants to go two-tight end, he can go with Graham and Turner or Crooks. Becks might not be as precise a route runner as Swan (or he might be, haven't broken down the tape on this one ... or any other one), but he just finds ways to get open. And Jefferson has shown he can make plays.

Just don't see the other guys mentioned as possible "step up" candidates - Maurice Moore, Daven Jones, Marcus Randle-El, Gilreath, Xavier Harris - making an appreciable impact. Surely not right away against a good Penn State team. Maybe Gilreath, we have evidence of his quickness. Prove me wrong, guys.

This reminds me of the 2002 season, when Evans got hurt and Williams and Orr stepped in as starters as freshmen (anyone remember if they were true or redshirt?) and put up good numbers, but it was definitely not smooth sailing for that year's offense, or team.

BTW, read on the JS Badger blog that Williams had just signed with the Rams, didn't know he'd been cut by the Niners.

One other Badger note: the beat writers are making note of how much Donovan threw against Illinois, and for good reason, it was too much. That was dictated more by game situation - playing from two scores behind much of the game - rather than original intent, but it can't continue if this program is to have success.

Every time a Badger QB throws a ton of passes for a ton of yards, all I can think of is the loss to Minnesota in '93, when Bevell moved the team up and down the field but had five picks. That game cost UW a chance at a national championship, at least in Barry's mind. Just hope the day our QB threw 49 passes and two picks at Illinois doesn't cost us in the same way, although the way our D is playing we might lose again.