Getting blown out of the water and then stomped on repeatedly by Ohio State Saturday night hurt a lot, but at least it was the opposing team inflicting the damage.

And could it really get much worse than the 59-0 final that ended up tying the school record for biggest shutout loss? Most people around the Wisconsin football program, myself included, wouldn’t have thought so.

But we forgot to factor in friendly fire.

As much as it stung when Bret Bielema left for Arkansas more than two years ago, little consolation came in that he left for a better conference, even if the Razorbacks weren’t a better program at the time.

And when it came to how Bielema actually left his job at Wisconsin, it could be justified by how clueless and inane he acted during his seven-year stint as head coach. There was a fairly large contingent that despised Bielema, and when he left for Arkansas, they were happy to see him go, despite the knife he had left in the collective Wisconsin fan base’s back.

But there’s no consolation this time. There’s nothing to justify the move either. This one hurts more, much more.

Gary Andersen wandered into Madison around this time two years ago and from the outset seemed like a fatherly figure who cared about not only the football program, but maybe even more so, his players.

At some point into his Wisconsin tenure, maybe Andersen would have thought that bigger and better things were on the horizon and another job was better off for him. But with how he acted in his two years before this week, you would have thought he would have waited until after a bowl game and informed his players in a respectable manner.

Instead, Andersen did exactly what no one thought he ever would. He packed his bags silently and snuck out the same back door Bielema had used in his escape just two years prior. He didn’t tell anyone, not Athletic Director Barry Alvarez, not his assistants and not even his own son on the team, Chasen Andersen, according to Alvarez.

Andersen had started to mold a new identity for Wisconsin and create a football family that he said he loved to coach and seemed to care about a great deal. But when it mattered most, or at the very least when being honest mattered most, Andersen walked out and left the rest of his football family out in the cold.

Who Andersen had shown himself to be through two short years doesn’t match up with his decision to leave and how he left. And coupled with the fact that he left for a program that just went 5-7 this past season and hides perpetually in the shadow of its in-state big brother Oregon, the decision falls in a category far beyond bamboozling.

I’m not going to try to understand a decision that may never make any sense. It could have been for family reasons, it might have been related to stricter academic restrictions for recruits or it could have been because he was never comfortable as the head coach of a program that has become expected to succeed year in and year out.

But whatever the reason, Andersen is gone and Wisconsin is better because of it. Sure, he seemed like a nice guy and he was a class act until he left the program Wednesday, but contrary to what Alvarez said in his press conference Wednesday night, Andersen wasn’t the right fit.

Sure, he was at the helm for one of the worst losses in school history, but it goes much further than that. Andersen was nice, but that’s really all he was. Alvarez had a swagger about him in his tenure as head coach, and he still does to this day, which is what has driven him to his success. Even Bielema, as loathsome as he might have been at times, had a certain charisma about him that made him someone who recruits want to play for and a coach players can build around.

But Andersen lacked that charisma, and on top of that he proved he couldn’t manage the team very well. The beginning of the season hinted to that with the collapse against LSU and the Joel Stave conundrum that ensued. There was also the deflating loss against Penn State on Senior Day last year and the miserable performance on the road at Northwestern this year.

It was a small sample size, and Andersen hardly had enough of a track record to judge what he did in his two years at Wisconsin, but the small slip ups and his overwhelmingly even-keeled demeanor don’t add up to someone who had the potential to take Wisconsin to special places.

In fact, it was the right decision for Andersen to bolt for Oregon State. At least when he makes it to a big game and gets blown out with the Beavers, he’ll still be exceeding expectations.