When the first College Football Playoff standings came out on Tuesday night, no one expected the Wisconsin Badgers to be one of the top four teams at this moment. It’s pretty much a forgone conclusion that Wisconsin would be knocked a few spots for their soft schedule. No one expected they would be nearly out of the top ten at nine treated like they’re playing the weakest of the weak. A part of this isn’t the Badgers fault, yet they’re getting punished all the same. Hope is not lost for this Wisconsin team though.

It’s very early in college football. We have five weeks that will promise to be absolute madness where the standings could be flipped entirely upside down. All of the teams that are above Wisconsin face tough matchups at some point in the next five weeks. If Wisconsin keeps winning, they’re going to rise to the top. The soft part of their schedule gets more difficult in the final month with matchups against Indiana, Iowa and Michigan who are all going to be bowl teams. Wisconsin fans cannot bemoan about a bad schedule though, it’s not the fault of the team.

There were a few teams on Wisconsin’s schedule who were worse than expected when the season began in August. The most notable one is BYU. I don’t think anyone expected the Cougars to have one total win on the season. BYU is usually a seven to nine win program, and if that’s the case, Wisconsin’s blowout victory on the road would carry more weight. Same goes for Nebraska. Winning in Lincoln isn’t easy, but to the voters eyes, it looks like a cakewalk compared to other years given Nebraska’s overall struggles.

Crazy thing about this all is that many teams above Wisconsin are in danger of losing this weekend. Ohio State, Penn State, Clemson and Oklahoma are all on the road against a tough opponent. I’ll be shocked if all four of those teams end up winning on Saturday. If Wisconsin continues to do their job and win football games, they’ll be fine. It’s unfortunate that their schedule looks way worse than it actually is in certain years.

Charlie.