There won’t be any football in Madison this weekend. No, Barry Alvarez takes a back seat to Kalekeni Banda today, as if he had not been trailing the enigmatic Wisconsin soccer coach all season.
Not jumping on the Banda bandwagon? Must have a bad impression about that low-scoring goofy game with a checkered ball and an even more checkered past.
Sure, no one has ever packed 80,000 delirious Badger fans into McClimon Track and Soccer complex. Wouldn’t even be able to find section O, for better or for worse. No one has ever tried, and no one will.
Soccer is not Wisconsin’s game. It’s no replacement for football, is it?
Sure isn’t.
For a thousand years Europeans have been fighting amongst themselves, storming castles and charging troops and playing soccer. Whole societies, whole countries were at stake, being reshaped and demarcated along religious and cultural lines.
No coincidence the first soccer balls were skulls.
The game is war. The game is perfect.
That’s why there are soccer hooligans. That’s why 150,000-seat stadiums collapse, overfilled with people. That’s why soccer games turn into battlegrounds, or stampedes, or massacres.
Make fun of Banda’s “rhythmic” style of play all you want. This stuff is serious.
Think of the kinetics involved, or the physiology if that’s your thing. Whether its explosive or conservative or rhythmic, soccer is physical. It’s all about movement. Moving the body. Moving the ball.
Think of it like basketball on grass, if that’s how you want to think about it. Think of graceful drives and skillful ball-handling. Only, think of it on a 100-yard scale of uneven earth instead of 100 feet of uniform hardwood. Imagine you have to control the ball with your feet, instead of your hands. Imagine goaltending is allowed.
It’s a whole new ballgame, only it predates basketball by about 700 years. Predates the Packers, too. Even predates football.
It was football before there was football.
Soccer, huh? Imagine that.
And just imagine: you get to see it firsthand. It’s here, for you. Today. Tomorrow. Sunday. A thousand years of history on display on our own campus. And I’m not talking about Banda.
College soccer isn’t the best spectacle on earth, especially American college soccer. But it’s what we have, and it’s not the worst thing either.
The Big Ten is stacked.
Just look at Indiana. Watch them Friday when they tear apart Wisconsin or Michigan with their blazing offense. Watch them storm into the finals with meticulous defense. Somebody once said, in another sport, that defense wins championships. Nobody says much about soccer. You don’t have to say a word, just watch.
Won’t be an easy row to hoe for Indiana, either.
Six teams in the Big Ten are over .500, including Banda Bola. This isn’t your football Big Ten either. No 11 teams here, just seven.
Six of seven isn’t bad.
Penn State is a monster, too. They operate like a machine, like clockwork. You can barely tell offense from defense, the way they move the ball around the field. Check ’em out; might be a threat to those Hoosiers.
Look out for Ohio State. Sixth seed. Defending champs. Nationally ranked. And still went just 1-4-1 in the Big Ten. That’s a tough conference.
The win — well, it was against Northwestern. Nothing tough about Northwestern. I’m not gonna lie.
But Michigan and State are pretty tough. Spartans win with defense. Shoulda known the Wolverines would be winning just one year after the program’s inception.
Trust me, they’re just as fun to root against in soccer, too. So show up for the first round and get a preview of next week’s football game. Might even be competitive, which is more than I can say for that other game.
Which leaves us with Wisconsin. Don’t like soccer? Been disappointed by Banda’s teams too often?
Don’t worry about it. Get ready for some magic. These guys are good, so good they already weathered the storm. That was the knock on Banda before: He starts hot, then the team dives, then it dies. Badgers took a dive this year, but didn’t die. Badgers fell to .500. But Banda Bola won three in a row. Best record under the fifth-year coach.
And the team is at home now. See what Ohio State did last year? Beat Indiana and Penn State. Buckeyes had the tournament at home that year, too.
Banda gets Indiana in the second round, if he gets past Michigan. Maybe the Bola will stay on a rolla, or maybe not. But the Hoosiers are just as worth watching Sunday, maybe more so.
Just make sure you watch. You might not get to see anything like it for another thousand years.
