All hail Joel Stave, King of the Axe.
Wait, who?
You might not appreciate the often-beleaguered Wisconsin quarterback, but that's OK — neither do plenty of Badgers fans. He's a former walk-on who had the good fortune to understudy Russell Wilson while a redshirt, and the bad fortune to follow the superstar as the starter, and he's forever being reminded, even in his home stadium, that he doesn't measure up to that lofty standard.
Even his coach, in an otherwise positive assessment of the senior quarterback's career this week, added a caveat. "Certainly anyone that's played that long," coach Paul Chryst pointed out, "is going to have some moments where it didn't go exactly how you'd hoped."
Probably so. But he's had an awful lot, the Gophers can attest, where it did — more than almost anyone else in Wisconsin history. Stave will take the final regular-season snaps of a remarkable career Saturday at TCF Bank Stadium: four years that included the second-most passing yards, completed passes and touchdown passes in Wisconsin history. He has quarterbacked the Badgers to victory 29 times in 36 career starts, just one fewer than Brooks Bollinger's school-record 30 wins in 42 starts.
And Saturday's border war could make him the Paul Bunyan of Wisconsin quarterbacks: Stave can become the first Badger ever to quarterback his team to possession of the legendary Axe in four consecutive seasons. Not that it would quiet many of the social-media scoffs and message-board sneers.
"People are going to choose to remember him however they want to," Chryst said.
The Gophers will remember him mostly as the guy handing the ball to Montee Ball, James White and Melvin Gordon, a game manager tasked primarily with keeping blunders to a minimum. Tracy Claeys game-planned the past three Wisconsin games as Gophers defensive coordinator and admits he didn't spend hours scheming ways to thwart Stave.