Wisconsin Football: How Emotion Decided and Decides This Season

Great teams are built on it in doses. It is the very essence of memorable games, and the reason why the American public still floods to any box office promising a story about how the fight in the dog outweighed its talent and it claimed victory against all odds. 

It is emotion. 

The Badgers have spent the last two weeks getting acquainted with to two teams fueled by passion as players transcend their mortal limitations, and for 60 minutes in October, play preternaturally in front of their homecoming crowds. 

Emotion forced two quarterbacks to heave two Hail Marys in a moment of desperation. Emotion, as well as some God-given talent, willed those receivers to haul those footballs in. It is the reason perhaps why two coverages were just not enough to keep that underdog at bay. Used correctly, this kind of soulful motivation is a force multiplier. Misdirected, and the Badgers find themselves at 6-2 instead of 8-0. 

While the Michigan State Spartans and the Ohio State Buckeyes channeled their need for revenge into wins, Wisconsin can use it for good as well. Many articles have already documented that a berth in the Big Ten championship game is not only possible, but downright probable if Russell Wilson can keep the TDs coming. (The entire state of Wisconsin just knocked on wood.)

The schedule becomes much easier, but it will be up to a battered team to use their introspective moments to keep their eyes on the horizon. It will take more than third-down conversions and unblocked punts. It will take focus, and perhaps a Tebow-like speech after practice to keep the Cardinal and White moving. 

But, if the Badgers can harness the very same driving force that propelled its last two opponents to unlikely victories, then this season is far from over. 

The talent is there; it will just take a little emotion.