Wisconsin Football: 5 reasons why Badgers will stink in 2017

Wisconsin football enters the new year with big dreams of a Big Ten championship. Here are five reasons why the Badgers will stink instead in 2017.

Counterpoint: 5 reasons why the Badgers will in the national title in 2017

For the fourth time in six seasons, Wisconsin played in the Big Ten championship game in 2016. The Badgers narrowly lost to Penn State by a touchdown but still made it to the Cotton Bowl. They will once again be the favorites to represent the West in Indianapolis on the first weekend of December.

Paul Chryst‘s team has effectively become a divisional juggernaut. Neither Nebraska nor Iowa has the experience to hang with the Badgers in 2017. Minnesota and Northwestern are erstwhile pretenders that never seem to clear the hurdle from middleweight to contender. For the foreseeable future, the West is Wisconsin’s to lose.

That can be a blessing in disguise, though. Because Wisconsin never seems to be tested against the same quality of opponents as their counterparts in the opposite division, the Badgers have fallen short of their ultimate goals in recent years. When they played in the Leaders Division from 2011 through 2013, UW won both its championship game appearances.

Dreams of a conference title and a shot at a College Football Playoff berth are great. Without the requisite tests to forge one’s mettle throughout the course of the regular season, though, those pretensions are mere flights of fancy. Here are five reasons why the Badgers will stink instead of succeed in 2017.