Ducks, Badgers Eye Rose Bowl Redemption at BetLM

Ducks, Badgers Eye Rose Bowl Redemption

PASADENA, Calif. — The Rose Bowl is a liv­ing archive of foot­ball tra­di­tion. Every year, teams par­tic­i­pate in the same ocean­side pep ral­lies, Dis­ney­land vis­its and Hol­ly­wood beef-eating extrav­a­gan­zas before those flow­ered parade floats glide down Col­orado Boule­vard right before the game.

All that his­tory suits No. 9 Wis­con­sin per­fectly. Coach Bret Bielema has built a Mid­west pow­er­house by largely adher­ing to tra­di­tional styles and schemes, deter­mined to win Rose Bowls with unapolo­get­i­cally old-fashioned football.

And though No. 6 Ore­gon usu­ally seems to be vis­it­ing our planet from the near future, coach Chip Kelly’s Ducks also love every bit of the his­tory they see out of their mir­rored helmets.

The last two losers of the Rose Bowl will return Mon­day for a chance at redemp­tion in the 98th edi­tion of the Grand­daddy of Them All, match­ing two offenses with thor­oughly dis­parate strate­gies for rack­ing up sim­i­larly huge num­bers on the scoreboard.

“You can’t get two teams much more dif­fer­ent than these, but that’s why I think it’s going to be a great game,” said Bielema, who has led the Bad­gers to their first back-to-back Rose Bowls in a dozen years. “We do things a cer­tain way at Wis­con­sin like we’ve done them in the past, and Ore­gon always has some­thing new for you. Peo­ple are going to see some­thing spe­cial in this matchup.”

Bielema was a defen­sive line­man at Iowa in the 1991 Rose Bowl, which fea­tured the most total points (80) in the game’s his­tory. That record could fall before sun­set in Arroyo Seco if quar­ter­back Rus­sell Wil­son gets the Bad­gers (11–2) rolling and Oregon’s Dar­ron Thomas can orches­trate his offense’s usual success.

“We’ll be com­fort­able from the jump, because we’ve already played in these types of games before,” said Thomas, a red­shirt at the Rose Bowl two years ago. “Every­body wants to knock us off, so they come with their best punch. It’s not really pres­sure, but we want to win one.”

Both teams head into the Rose Bowl with impres­sive pedi­grees of recent suc­cess– except in bowl games.

Two-time Big Ten cham­pion Wis­con­sin lost the Rose Bowl to TCU last year, while three-time Pac-12 cham­pion Ore­gon was beaten by Ohio State two years ago before falling in the BCS title game last Jan­u­ary. The Ducks are the only school play­ing in their third straight BCS bowl this sea­son, while the Bad­gers are look­ing for just their sec­ond bowl win in five years.

Although Ore­gon has rev­o­lu­tion­ized col­lege foot­ball with every­thing from its hurry-up offenses to its wildly inven­tive uni­form looks, Kelly rel­ishes this matchup and this sta­dium more than, say, the site of the BCS title game in sub­ur­ban Phoenix last year.

“You felt like you were walk­ing into a space­ship,” Kelly said of the Ari­zona Car­di­nals’ sta­dium. “It has kind of a futur­is­tic feel to it. I’m a lot more com­fort­able in the Rose Bowl set­ting. That’s what col­lege foot­ball is all about.”

The Rose Bowl’s his­tory also is vital to Wis­con­sin quar­ter­back Rus­sell Wil­son, who acknowl­edged a feel­ing of won­der when he vis­ited the sta­dium last week. Bad­gers safety Aaron Henry says his team­mates have their awe in check after last season’s loss, instead focus­ing on remov­ing the empty feel­ing they brought home from South­ern California.

“To go through every­thing we went through to get here the last two years, we don’t want to lose it twice,” Henry said. “This game means too much for our careers and our lives. This is his­tory right here.”

Many play­ers on both teams still remain from the schools’ last Rose Bowl teams, but two new quar­ter­backs are in charge. Wil­son is wrap­ping up his incred­i­ble sin­gle sea­son at Wis­con­sin by ful­fill­ing his late father’s wish to see him on the hal­lowed turf in Pasadena, while Thomas is com­plet­ing his sec­ond stand­out sea­son after replac­ing Jere­miah Masoli.

“It’s a great matchup because they’re an all-around team,” Thomas said. “They’re not going to do any­thing to show you a look you haven’t seen. They are a base team, and they’re going to come out and do their thing.”

Just about the only cer­tainty in this matchup is Wisconsin’s offense con­trol­ling the ball for most of the min­utes on the clock. With their run-based offense and another mas­sive front line, the Bad­gers led the Big Ten in time of pos­ses­sion, while Oregon’s highly caf­feinated offense had the ball for fewer min­utes than any offense in the Pac-12.

Although Ore­gon has absolutely no inter­est in time of pos­ses­sion, the Ducks’ biggest obsta­cle might be time– specif­i­cally the time Wis­con­sin gets to pre­pare for their schemes. Dur­ing Kelly’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary three sea­sons, Ore­gon is 1–4 in sea­son open­ers and bowl games when oppos­ing staffs have extra weeks to pre­pare for the hurry-up offense.

Kelly real­izes his teams haven’t fared well when return­ing from a long lay­off, but doesn’t see any rust on his Ducks.

“I think if you make a big deal out of it, it turns into a big deal for your play­ers,” Kelly said. “As long as you’re con­sis­tent in your approach, every­body is deal­ing with the same thing.”

The game also matches arguably col­lege football’s top two tail­backs in what’s likely to be their final games before declar­ing for the NFL draft.

With one more touch­down in his spec­tac­u­lar sea­son, Wisconsin’s Mon­tee Ball can tie Barry Sanders’ FBS record of 39 TDs in a sea­son. And with 1,759 yards rush­ing enter­ing the game, he’s likely to take the NCAA rush­ing title away from Oregon’s LaMichael James, who won it last year and merely leads the FBS this fall with 149.6 yards per game.

Tra­di­tion will always be served at the Rose Bowl, but even Wis­con­sin made a few minor alter­ations to its long-hallowed red-and-white uni­forms before the game. The Bad­gers real­ize Ore­gon will be wear­ing Nike’s lat­est cre­ations, includ­ing a hel­met that reflected the lights of the Los Ange­les hotel ball­room where it was unveiled shortly after Christmas.

Henry thinks the Ducks’ pro­gres­sive fash­ion sense could even help the tradition-rich Bad­gers in the biggest game of the season.

“It gives us a bet­ter tar­get,” Henry said. “It gives us the abil­ity to see them a lit­tle bet­ter and make tack­les or make plays on the ball. A lot of our guys, to get rid of the reflec­tion, wear eye-black. I don’t think we’re going to have a problem.”

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more col­lege foot­ball news see: Ducks, Bad­gers eye Rose Bowl redemp­tion .

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