Nemesis!

There is a finite amount of time you can root for your favorite college player. As soon as they step on campus, there is a clock that ticks. Maybe they redshirt and stay for five years. Maybe they rip it up and leave early to pursue a career in professional sports. Either way, there is a limited amount of games, a finite amount of plays that any college player participates in.

The flip side of that coin is that sometimes, there are opponents that are extremely happy seeing them leave. Let’s celebrate the Badger running backs that put the biggest hurt down on Big 10 opponents with something I call the Nemesis Index.

The Nemesis Index compares a Wisconsin running back’s (and Brooks Bollinger) body of work in Big 10 play to how he rushed against each individual school. As usual, all game stats were pulled from Sports Reference’s college football play index. I cut the data off at the top 500(ish) rushing yards in a game since 2000, and only kept players with over 500 yards rushing in Big 10 play.

Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

To explain the math that produces the Nemesis Index, let’s walk through Brooks Bollinger’s body of work, and how he did against Minnesota. On average, Bollinger rushed for 70.5 yards in a game, but in three games against the Gophers he averaged 94.3. That puts his initial level of ‘I am going to cream these idiots’ score at 23.8, qualifying him to have a Nemesis Index against Minnesota.

Additionally, he had 7.9 yards per rush, well above his conference carry average of 5.4. He gets two bonuses. The initial 23.8 is multiplied by the ypc difference of 2.5+1. (If it was a negative ypc difference, it would be “multiplied by one”, and adding one to positive differences corrects for that, and this is just making stuff up anyway.) Finally, that new number of 83.4 is multiplied by the three games Bollinger played against the Gophers, putting his Nemesis Index at 250.25. Let’s see how that stacks up.

Good for 11th. As usual, we can check if this makes sense by seeing where Melvin Gordon shows up. He is first, for being the entire reason Bo Pelini got fired in his two wonderful performances against the Huskers.

He is closely followed by Jonathan Taylor’s performances against Purdue and Nebraska, who happen to be next on the Badger docket. There’s also a fun ‘remember these dudes’ vibe. Zach Brown went off against Minnesota too!

Only Maryland escapes having their day thoroughly ruined by someone. Minnesota leads the pack with nine entries, Illinois at eight, Northwestern at seven and Indiana at six. Michigan and Purdue both show up five times, and Penn State, Iowa, Michigan State and Nebraska all appear four times. (I think we can agree that Nebraska feels like they show up more.) Rutgers has three appearances, and Ohio State dislikes Corey Clement and Anthony Davis (ever so slightly.)

As usual, let’s take a look at Taylor’s climb in the career rushing record book.

We’re getting into some rarefied air now. By passing Montee Ball, JT is second all time in Wisconsin lore (ya’ll know the name), and third in Big 10 history behind Ohio State’s Archie Griffin. This update, he’s passed LaDainian Tomlinson, Darren Sproles, Mike Hart and Herschel Walker, three absolute legends of college football and a guy who should have done more against Appalachian State.