Wisconsin football dropped 83 points on Indiana in 2010. Let's look back
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Fifteen years ago, the Wisconsin football team made a statement against Indiana that reverberates years later, although the roles sure have reversed in 2025.
On Nov. 13, 2010, Wisconsin bludgeoned the Hoosiers at Camp Randall Stadium, 83-20. Though coach Bret Bielema insisted he wasn’t trying to run up the score, the nature of the Bowl Championship Series created a laboratory where such a thing was advantageous for the Badgers.
There was no College Football Playoff — or even a Big Ten championship game, until it debuted the following year. Style points mattered when rankings produced by poll voters made up two-thirds of the BCS formula.
Wisconsin, at 8-1, was ranked sixth in the nation but had an outside shot to reach the title game if frontrunners Oregon or Auburn slipped and lost a game.
But even more importantly, the team with the highest BCS ranking from the Big Ten would go to the Rose Bowl, and UW had an inside track.
Mismatch on paper turns into an even bigger mismatch on the field for Badgers
The 2010 Badgers were loaded with future NFL players like James White, Lance Kendricks, Travis Frederick, Gabe Carimi, Jared Abbrederis, Montee Ball and star edge rusher J.J. Watt. Future Packers quarterback Scott Tolzien led the offense, and the Badgers were looking for a Rose Bowl berth, if not a trip to the title game.
Indiana came into the game at 4-5, but none of the wins had come against Big Ten schools. On paper, losses to ranked Michigan (42-35), Northwestern (20-17) and Iowa (18-13) suggested the Hoosiers were at least in the ballpark of a Big Ten victory.
But not that day against the Badgers.
Ball, making his first career start in the stead of injured John Clay, ran for 167 yards and three touchdowns. White had two more scores. Kendricks, Nick Toon, Abbrederis and Jake Byrne had touchdown catches. The Badgers outscored Indiana in the second quarter, 28-3, and took a 38-10 lead at the break, but they remained merciless in the second half, scoring 21 points in the third quarter and 24 points in the fourth.
It was a school record for points in a game, obliterating the 70 they had scored against non-FBS opponent Austin Peay just a few weeks earlier and well ahead of the 69 scored in 1962. Return man David Gilreath had become a permanent fixture in Badgers lore when he returned the opening kickoff against No. 1 Ohio State three games earlier in an unforgettable 31-18 win, but he was just as valuable in this game with two kick returns worth 84 yards and a punt return for 22.
“I think any time you can do what we did today, it sends a statement,” Toon said afterward. “That we’re up there with the rest of the teams in the Big Ten, and we have the talent and opportunity to do something great.”
Backups contributed to the blowout
As Ball put it, “It’s not our job to stop scoring.”
Ball was technically the team’s third-string tailback behind Clay and White, and we know today how illustrious his career became, so it certainly worked in UW’s favor to have such talent waiting in the wings. Abbrederis caught a 74-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter after the Badgers had already reached 69 points, but that was a pass from a backup quarterback in Jon Budmayr to a backup receiver at the time. Again, Abbrederis would go on to have a great career, so the Badgers had some explosive players waiting for an opportunity.
The final touchdown came from third-string quarterback Nate Tice on a 17-yard bootleg with less than 2 minutes to play. Tice, the son of former Vikings head coach Mike Tice, is today a staff writer for Yahoo! Sports analyzing the NFL.
The blockers included future NFL fixtures Kevin Zeitler, a first-round pick, and Ricky Wagner, who today have 22 years of NFL experience between them. Carimi also became a first-round draft pick. John Moffitt was taken in the third round, Bill Nagy in the seventh.
One future NFL player, punter Brad Nortman, didn’t punt the ball once. UW scored on all 12 of its possessions, with Tolzien completing 15 of 18 passes (83%) and the rushing attack racking up 338 yards.
Wisconsin didn’t stop scoring when Indiana left town in 2010, either. UW won handily in the Big House over Michigan, 48-28, then drubbed Northwestern, 70-23, and earned a date in the Rose Bowl.
The magic ran out there; Wisconsin dropped a gut-punching loss to Texas Christian, 21-19, with future NFL veteran Andy Dalton outdueling Tolzien.
This year, Indiana is the juggernaut and the Badgers are the vulnerable program
But today is 2025, and things have dramatically changed.
Indiana is no longer the Big Ten doormat it once was — far from anything of the sort. At 10-0, the Hoosiers will enter the game with the Badgers on Saturday, Nov. 15 as the No. 2 team in the country, looking to solidify their footing for the CFP. They’re coming off an electric win at Penn State to keep their undefeated season alive.
In fact, for a struggling Wisconsin program, the Hoosiers under second-year coach Curt Cignetti are seen as a blueprint that UW could hope to emulate in returning to its previous success.
Cignetti has even developed a reputation for running up the score against inferior opponents as the program emphasizes relentlessness to maintain its place among the NCAA’s best. Indiana leads the nation in margin of victory.
Though the Badgers are coming off an uplifting 13-10 win against ranked opponent Washington, the program remains a longshot to give Indiana a scare — they started the week as a 30½-point underdog. In other words, it may not just be the Marquette basketball team that watches an Indiana team scoring at will this week.
Wisconsin didn’t stop with its dominance over Indiana in 2010. The Badgers won the meeting in 2011, 59-7, then 62-14 the following year and 51-3 the year after that. They didn’t meet again until 2017, when UW prevailed on the road, 45-17.
But then the global positioning of the two programs began to shift. Indiana won the last two meetings against Wisconsin, in 2023 and 2020, albeit by narrow 20-14 and 14-6 margins. The Hoosiers got as high as No. 7 in the nation in 2020, then reached the rankings again in 2021 before their surge last year to as high as No. 5.
Wisconsin has scored 40 points in six Big Ten games combined this year, not even half the tally they put on Indiana in 2010.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin football scored 83 vs Indiana in 2010. Let’s look back
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