Three years. Three years since we brought in this new staff and I still cannot figure out what identity we are trying to build. You look at the 2027 recruiting class rankings and we are sitting there outside the top 25 while Ohio State and Oregon stockpile five stars like it is nothing. And I know what the young guys will say. They will say recruiting rankings do not matter, that we develop players better than anyone. And sure, I remember the 1998 team that had maybe two four-star recruits on the entire roster and still ran through the Big Ten. But here is the thing that gets me. We used to have a system. A damn identity. You knew what Wisconsin football was supposed to look like. Barry Alvarez walked into that locker room in 1990 and said we are going to run the ball, we are going to play defense, and we are going to be tougher than anybody we line up against. And we did it. Three Rose Bowls in four years in the late 90s. That 1993 team that shocked the world against UCLA in Pasadena. That was built on Wisconsin kids who grew up wanting to be Badgers.
Now we are chasing spread offenses and trying to recruit kids from Florida and Texas who have no connection to this program. And the portal is just making it worse. You used to build a team over four years. You watched a freshman offensive lineman redshirt, learn the system, put on 30 pounds of muscle, and then start for three years. Now you get a transfer from some program who shows up for fall camp and expects to start immediately because of what he did somewhere else. I look at what Indiana did winning a national title in 2025 and I cannot help but wonder if that could have been us if we had stayed true to who we were instead of trying to be something we are not. They built that team the old way. Developed their own guys, played tough defense, ran the ball when they had to. Meanwhile we are out here in the 2026 recruiting year trying to land skill position players who would have never looked at Madison ten years ago.
And do not even get me started on that ESPN list they put out ranking the best players by jersey number. I scrolled through the whole thing looking for Badgers representation and I found Ron Dayne at number 33 and Joe Thomas at number 72 and that was about it. But you know what I noticed? Notre Dame had about eight guys on that list. Eight. And we are supposed to go into South Bend this fall and compete with them? I remember when we used to play them in the 60s and 70s and it was a battle of the old school. Now they are sitting at number four in the 2026 recruiting rankings with 18 top-300 prospects while we are fighting to stay relevant. Something has to change. And I am not sure Shawn Eichorst coming back as AD is going to fix it. He was at Nebraska when they fired him. What makes anybody think he knows how to get Wisconsin back to where we were in the 90s and early 2000s? I will believe it when I see it.