I can respect this position - if I had the lens of a 'Cat fan, it's probably how I'd feel, too.
From a Badger fan standpoint, UW was probably favored to win all 6 of those games at Evanston (if I'm wrong, maybe I've become more of an arrogant you-know-what than I care to admit). It does feel like Northwestern is the only school in the division that consistently figures out a way to get the Badgers to underperform vis-a-vis their norm. And that's true when they play in Madison, too. I'm going to credit that to coaching - Fitz is probably the best at maximizing his teams' chances in the conference, if not all of college football.
That's fair. I think what it comes down to, and what you eluded to, is that Fitz knows the formula to beat teams like Wisconsin and Iowa (aka- poor man's Wisconsin). Does it mean that NU always win those games? Of course not, but his teams are built to compete with the way the Badgers and Hawkeyes play football. We typically don't do it in a pretty fashion, but we play good defense, don't typically give up big plays, and play complimentary football on offense to try and control the game and make it a slog. As I said, it's not pretty, but it's typically successful.
I won't speak for all Cats fans, but I believe the biggest issue we have with posts like the one stating "why have we played so poorly down there?" is that this is what we ALWAYS hear after a team loses to NU. Despite us being an overall successful program over the last 25 years, and especially being a more consistently good program since Fitz became the coach in 2006, people still believe there is no way they should lose to Northwestern. After this many years, it just gets old after awhile.
Should be a great game on Saturday. I know that Wisconsin is a good football team, but what I don't know yet is if they are a great football team. Illinois is pretty bad and Michigan is a lost puppy in a big world right now. Wisconsin may very well be great, they sure have looked it so far, but the competition has been iffy. I am confident that the Wisconsin defense is great, but how great is the offense? We shall see. What I will say about this NU team is that our defense is pretty damn good too and we have a lot of really good athletes on that side of the ball along with a fantastic DC (Mike Hankwitz, who I know you are quite familiar with from his time in Madison). This is as much athleticism I have seen from our defense ever- not hyperbole. Excited for this matchup because I think we have a really good football team and now we are playing the unquestioned gold standard of the West Division. If we can pull it out, we are in perfect position to win the West with only Michigan State, Minnesota, and Illinois left on the schedule.
. That thing triggers seizures.