Category: Athletics

When Gary Andersen was the head football coach at Utah State, he had a knack for uncovering unheralded recruits and turning them into good players.

A former UW-Madison basketball player has endowed a $50 million scholarship fund that will offer up to 250 Wisconsin high school hoopsters per year a major financial boost to attend college in Wisconsin, it was announced Thursday.

When Bill Busch left the University of Wisconsin to accept his first full-time football coaching job at Northern Arizona prior to the 1995 season, he was met at the airport by Gary Andersen.

It?d be one thing if its horrid performance at the free throw line was the only thing that plagued the University of Wisconsin men?s basketball team during a 49-47 loss to Michigan State on Tuesday night at the Kohl Center.

New University of Wisconsin football coach Gary Andersen was slightly taken aback the first time he met Bill Hahn, the executive director of the Mendota Gridiron Club.”I think we overwhelmed him a little bit,” Hahn said of the 90-minute meeting.

Barry Alvarez wants you to think the wound is healed all while peeling back a blood-stained bandage.The University of Wisconsin athletic director is a couple weeks removed from an emotional, tumultuous month in which he held down two demanding jobs and made one of the most important personnel decisions of his career.

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents on Friday approved the contracts for football coach Gary Andersen and his two coordinators. As previously reported, Andersen has a five-year deal that will pay him $1.8 million his first year (with a $400,000 base) and go up $100,000 the next four years. That means he will be paid $2.2 million in his fifth year.

When he was introduced as Arkansas head coach last month, Bret Bielema explained one of the reasons he left Wisconsin was the inability to adequately compensate assistant coaches. UW athletic director Barry Alvarez argued otherwise.

Based on the developments Friday, the assistants on Gary Andersen?s first UW staff will be paid well.The UW Board of Regents on Friday approved the contracts of Andersen, offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig and defensive coordinator Dave Aranda.

A little less than a month after being named Wisconsin?s new head coach, Gary Andersen has a new contract. Provided he signs it, that is.

There were mornings when Peter Konz would pull into the Atlanta Falcons practice facility and just sit in his car.

Browns Pro Bowl offensive left tackle Joe Thomas is a finalist for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, the league announced tonight.

Young Badger fans got the opportunity to meet the University of Wisconsin?s women?s hockey team Sunday.

One of the suspects charged in the attack on Montee Ball will be sentenced Friday.

The Big Ten men?s basketball race is unfolding just as every analyst predicted: Unranked Wisconsin is alone in first place four games into the season.

Prince Moody, the coordinator for UW-Madison?s Beyond the Game, lived in a bubble his whole life because he was part of the crème de la crème of athletics. As a college student athlete, his world revolved around athletics and academics and he could easily hide out in that world and not really deal with the world that surrounded that bubble.

Gary Andersen?s plan for building his first coaching staff at Wisconsin was a two-step process.

It?s quite an experience to walk out onto the Rose Bowl field in front of 93,359 screaming fans, especially under the leadership of your school?s most-decorated football coach of all-time.

There haven?t been many dynasties in the long history of University of Wisconsin athletics. Some good ? even great ? teams, to be sure. But dynasties?

University of Wisconsin football coach Gary Andersen is close to filling the final two openings on his coaching staff.

Gary Andersen is close to completing his first coaching staff at Wisconsin. A UW source confirmed Tuesday that Jay Boulware, the tight ends coach/special teams coordinator at Auburn from 2009 through last season, will coach UW?s tight ends.

A Madison police official says a fugitive in a battery case is also wanted for questioning about his possible role in last summers attack on Badger football star Montee Ball.

The owner of Milwaukee?s newest all-sports station WOKY-AM (920) has no plans to pursue the play-by-play contracts for the Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Brewers and Milwaukee Bucks, but does not rule out the possibility of seeking the Wisconsin Badgers.

An academic has put together a list of what each Football Bowl Subdivision program is worth, and the University of Wisconsin program is valued at $296.1 million.

Although he lost offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig to the University of Wisconsin, San Diego State football coach Rocky Long is happy with the way new Badgers coach Gary Andersen went about the process.

Two of the highest-paid athletic coaches in the University of Wisconsin System during the 2011-12 school year have already left for better-paying jobs elsewhere.

Jared Abbrederis is returning to the University of Wisconsin for his senior year, a source close to the wide receiver said Saturday night.

For the second straight year, the University of Wisconsin football team is losing its starting center a year early to the NFL draft.

Sure Stanford Cardinal squeaked out a Rose Bowl victory over the Wisconsin Badgers Tuesday at the Rose Bowl, but when it came to a tailgating challenge before the game, Bucky came out on top.

Ryan Groy and Ethan Hemer didn?t need to peruse the Wisconsin depth chart to understand that the Badgers should be stronger in 2013 despite a second consecutive year of wholesale staff changes.

“I think we?re going to be one of the better teams we have had here in the last couple years,” said Groy, a redshirt junior offensive lineman who is expected to return for his fifth year. “I think we?re going to be a pretty special team to be honest. We?ll have an unbelievable senior class. There are a lot of leaders in it.”

Badgers fans watched the game on 21 color televisions arrayed around the tavern as Club Paragon waitresses delivered buckets of beer to tables. A Bloody Mary bar featured a Badgers helmet filled with lemons and limes while a Packers helmet was stuffed with celery stalks and olives.

Barry Alvarez and the Wisconsin players no doubt earned respect with their gritty performance in the 99th Rose Bowl against favored Stanford.

Yet as they had too many times during the 2012 season, the Badgers failed to make the plays they needed in the closing minutes and failed to steal a victory that was within reach.

Apparently there are badgers at the South Pole.

And they?re football fans.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a long and storied history of exploration and science in Antarctica, but when scientists aren?t busy taking core samples, measuring glaciers and looking for subatomic particles, they?re cheering on their football team.

By 4 p.m., Ashland?s Neighborly Bar looked like a University of Wisconsin alumni meeting: Badgers sweatshirts and headwear were everywhere.

JANESVILLE ? Stephen Erlien?s standard garb on the Stanford University campus is a ragged, old UW-Madison Badgers hat and a Stanford jersey.

PASADENA, Calif. ? The view was still a sight to behold, the same as it has been for 99 years: the sun setting on the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance as the Rose Bowl champion was about to be decided. But this year?s meeting devolved into something familiar for Barry Alvarez: brawn, bruises and punts. A lot of punts.

For the 1,500 or so Badgers fans gathered Tuesday night at Union South, a nostalgic sense built up over 57 minutes and 30 seconds of football that Hall of Fame Coach Barry Alvarez could pull out one last Rose Bowl victory.

Trademarked University of Wisconsin merchandise is flying off store shelves. Figures released today show the products set a sales record in the 2011-2012 fiscal year. Gross royalties received at UW-Madison topped $3.7 million ? $400,000 more than the year before. Half of that money is earmarked for financial aid to undergraduate students.

When new Wisconsin head coach Gary Andersen was asked Friday where he was going to take the Badgers? football program next, athletic director Barry Alvarez couldn?t help but chuckle.

Sales of Bucky Badger gear set a new record in the 2011-2012 fiscal year, generating $3.75 million in royalties, half of which provides financial aid to University of Wisconsin-Madison students.

The jersey gauntlet has been thrown down for the Rose Bowl.Incoming Dane County Board Chair John Hendrick and Ken Yeager, Hendrick?s counterpart in Santa Clara County, have a friendly wager on the 2013 Rose Bowl, with the loser having to wear the jersey of the winner?s team.

University of Wisconsin offensive line coach Bart Miller has had discussions about the tight ends job on the staff of new coach Gary Andersen but no official interview yet.

“I?ve got a pretty big interview on (January) first,” Miller said Thursday.

This year?s Rose Bowl features a team in cardinal red and white representing a brainy school in the heartland against a team in cardinal red and white representing a brainy school out West. It pits a city often called the Berkeley of the Midwest against the actual Berkeley?s fancier, cantankerous California neighbor.

Both Wisconsin and Stanford have more to brag about in Nobels and Pulitzers than they do in Heismans or national football titles. Yet in many ways they?re as far apart stylistically as they are geographically.

In the wake of Wisconsin?s dominating offensive performance in the 70-31 victory over Nebraska in the Big Ten title game, two questions arose:

Where was that offense – which produced 539 rushing yards, 640 total yards and nine touchdowns through a variety of formations and calls – throughout the regular season?

Wisconsin quarterback Joel Stave received a belated Christmas gift Thursday.

The redshirt freshman from Whitnall High School, who has six starts on his résumé but has been sidelined since suffering a broken left collarbone Oct. 27, was cleared to play in the Rose Bowl.

Even as the University of Wisconsin athletic director, Barry Alvarez never stopped watching football games or practices as a coach.So, slipping back into a coaching role after seven years devoted solely to being the athletic director has not been difficult for Alvarez.

Madison Mayor Paul Soglin and Palo Alto Mayor Yiaway Yeh have agreed that the losing city will organize a tree planting in honor of the winning team. The losing mayor also will wear the opposing team?s hat during a City Council meeting and display the flag of the winning team for a day in January.