On the same day the Notre Dame football team released its depth chart, their Week 1 opponent not only refused to release its own depth chart but also gave one of the more bizarre explanations for why.
Just about a half hour before the Irish released its depth chart on Monday, Wisconsin announced it wouldn’t have a depth chart for the Week 1 game. Unlike some coaches who go out of their way to play some game with the idea of hiding who was playing and who wasn’t, the Badgers claimed that they weren’t releasing a depth chart because … they didn’t play a game last week.
"The in-season depth charts are based off the previous game’s usage ... made the decision not to speculate on this before the season." To make that statement even more bizarre, reports out of Madison claimed the decision not to release a depth chart for the game against Notre Dame wasn’t up to the coaches; instead, the Sports Information Department made it.
If either of those explanations were true, it suggests the Badgers have issues understanding how any of this works. It would also definitely call into question head coach Luke Fickell’s leadership style. It raises quite a few questions.
Wisconsin's depth chart decision creates more questions before Notre Dame football opener
The first is how and why the program makes its depth charts based on the previous game. That's not how many, if any, other teams do it. Notre Dame, for instance, talked all spring, summer, and training camp about how they were basing the depth chart on who won the battle for starting jobs. Those kinds of comments are near universal across the sport.
Is the general public supposed to believe that Wisconsin has no idea who will be starting for the team in 6 days? Isn’t there at least some sort of depth chart somewhere in the coaches’ offices laying out where the players can know, among other things, when they should run out to the field to line up?
One theory as to why Wisconsin used such an odd rationale for not putting out a list is that the Badgers are littered with injuries, and they don’t want Notre Dame to know that little tidbit. It could even be that there are enough guys banged up that Fickell and his staff genuinely don’t know who will be healthy enough to play and who will have to miss the season opener on Monday.
Of course, if the issue really is that Fickell doesn’t know who will start because of injuries, teams have a very easy fix on the depth chart. Notre Dame demonstrated it quite well in their own release. Just slap an “OR” next to a name, and suddenly, it’s a mystery which guy sees the field the most.
It’s a toss-up as to which is weirder. That Wisconsin is lying because it wants to hide things from Notre Dame, or that the Badgers’ SID is the one who decides on who starts and who backs guys up.
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