Sometimes, the moves that other make end up being all of the difference in the world. For the Wisconsin Badgers football team, no move helped them more in the last five years than Gary Andersen deciding to leave the program and join Oregon State out of nowhere. At the time, Badgers fans were stunned because it was fresh off the heels of Bret Bielema leaving Wisconsin for Arkansas. With Andersen deciding to leave Oregon State on Monday, Badger football should be pouring one out in his honor.

If Andersen would have stayed on at Wisconsin, he would have done significant damage to the program. Paul Chryst may still be the coach today, but it could be his first or second year at the job. Andersen did not buy into what Wisconsin wanted to do on offense, and the Wisconsin way. It feels douchey to write that sentence, but honestly, that’s how Wisconsin has done since Barry Alvarez. Unless you are a revolutionary in offense scheme, why try to fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place? Also, Andersen let multiple in-state recruits and potential walk-on’s find schools elsewhere which was also a major red flag.

I don’t know if it would have been as detrimental, but the former Badgers coach struck me as a Buzz Williams-type who would have left the cupboard bare for the next guy to try and rebuild. Could you imagine Wisconsin trying to revive their program after several years of Andersen damage? Maybe, it would not have been as severe, but he amassed seven losses in his only two years with the program. Chryst ended up with six in two years and still looking for his seventh.

We’ll see what’s next for the former Badgers coach. My guess is he latches on somewhere in the West Coast as there are plenty schools who would probably take him on as their head coach or a defensive coordinator.

Charlie.