The Badgers spent their offseason answering a much tougher question. After a 4-8 finish that ended with a loss to Minnesota and no bowl game for the second straight year, Luke Fickell brought in a three-man QB competition — Old Dominion transfer Colton Joseph, Louisville transfer Deuce Adams, and true freshman Ryan Hopkins — because incumbent Danny O'Neil is still working back from injury. Whoever wins that battle will be doing it against a USC defense that returns plenty of experience up front.
This series has a strange history. USC and Wisconsin met six times between 1953 and 1966, USC won every one, and then the two programs didn't cross paths again until a 2015 Holiday Bowl. Realignment turned a once-a-generation curiosity into a recurring conference date, and this trip to Camp Randall is USC's first taste of a building that's historically been one of the sport's tougher road environments.
USC's roster overhaul cuts both ways. The Trojans landed the No. 1-ranked 2026 recruiting class and return 15 starters, including nine on offense, but they also lost more than 40 players to the transfer portal and are nursing injuries to running back Waymond Jordan, safety Christian Pierce and cornerback Marquis Gallegos. Riley has called this a defining season, and a brutal back half of the schedule — Washington, Oregon, Penn State, Indiana, Ohio State — means there's little room for a letdown against a rebuilding Wisconsin team.
Wisconsin's own losses sting worse in a practical sense. Running back Gideon Ituka, who was carted off against Indiana last November, may be out for the entire 2026 season, and Fickell had to go get three transfer backs — Abu Sama, Bryan Jackson and Nate Palmer — just to stabilize the room. The Badgers did add a 33-player transfer class, which says everything about how much roster-building Fickell felt was needed after back-to-back non-bowl seasons.
Vegas has USC's win total sitting near 8.5 with playoff-contender buzz attached, while Wisconsin's sits around 6.5 with a bounce-back-or-bust framing hanging over Fickell's program. That gap shows up in how each side should be approaching this one — USC playing for seeding, Wisconsin playing to prove last year was the outlier and not the new normal.
