The 1962 Wisconsin Badgers football team represented the University of Wisconsin in the 1962 college football season. Wisconsin was the Big Ten Conference champion and ended the season with a #2 ranking in both the AP and UPI (now known as the Coaches' poll) polls, which remains the highest season-ending ranking in these polls in program history (since the inception of these polls in 1936 and 1958, respectively). Wisconsin played the #1 USC Trojans in the historic 1963 Rose Bowl, the first bowl game in college football history to pair the #1 and #2 teams in the nation. The 1962 team is also tightly linked to the resurgence of the program in the nineties through All-America end Pat Richter, who returned to the program as its athletic director in 1989 and is responsible for hiring Barry Alva