Bucky the "Best Bet" Come Fall
ESPN lists the Badgers as the BT favorite for football this fall. Ike was named the pre-season defensive player of the year (let's hope an alum bought him his own X-box so he can stay out of NIU dorm rooms). While I love the hype, I fear that the players are lapping it up as readily as the rest of us, setting us up for another disappointment parallel to 2000.
16 returning starters plus the punter and kicker and a mostly favorable schedule lead the pundits to this logical conclusion. There are many bear traps along the way however. Road contests at PSU and Illinois will test Bucky's mettle, and OSU has a bone to pick with the Badgers for their recent dominance in the horse shoe. Michigan is always our Achilles heel. Even when we manage to knock them off, an also ran comes along to ruin our chance to run the table (Minny in 1993 and 1994, NW in 2005).
That said, I plan on being at the Humpty Dump hoping there is more than an axe on the line.