Category: Athletics

Something didnâ??t feel right to Montee Ball as he said good-bye to his grandfather before leaving for Madison this summer.

MADISON (WKOW) — University Police are banning fans from bringing all bags, backpacks purses and other carry-ins into Camp Randall stadium for the remainder of the UW football season.

These restrictions, which were also in effect for the September 23 home game against Michigan State, will stay in place through the end of 2009.

The Big Ten Conference football championship wonâ??t be decided when the University of Wisconsin hosts Iowa Saturday. Nevertheless, it is difficult to overstate the importance of the game for UW (5-1, 2-1), which has a bye after this week.

There is no downplaying it, no denying it, no hiding it.

The University of Wisconsin men’s hockey team is the deepest and most experienced group coach Mike Eaves has had since the 2005-06 team that won the NCAA championship.

A series of high-level discussions took place this summer about the creation of a new menâ??s hockey league featuring the five Big Ten Conference members that sponsor the sport.

University of Wisconsin-Madison head coaches will be subject to state employee furlough days and seven of them have already taken at least one day off unpaid.

Another round of budget cuts is on tap for the University of Wisconsin Athletic Department, only this time the fiscal knife is poised to cut deeper. A year after having their budgets frozen or reduced minimally, coaches in the 23 sports will have to cut 5 percent for the 2010-11 operating budget.

University of Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema studied the statistical evidence – which reaffirmed his view of the Ohio State defense – and reached an obvious conclusion.

“It doesnâ??t take a rocket scientist to figure out that weâ??ve got to be able to run the football to be able to win,” he said.

Good luck.

The University of Wisconsin and the University of Washington will play a home-and-home football series beginning in 2017.The two teams will meet at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison on Sept. 2, 2017, and at Husky Stadium in Seattle on Sept. 1, 2018. The two teams have played four previous times, most recently in 1992.

Fans eager to see the University of Wisconsin upgrade its non-conference football schedule got their wish Tuesday.UW and Washington of the Pacific 10 Conference have agreed to a home-and-home deal for the 2017 and 2018 seasons, the schools have announced.

The University of Wisconsin football team managed to keep its cool in a heated rivalry game against Minnesota on Saturday.

The Golden Gophers did not. That certainly played a role in the Badgers winning 31-28, their sixth consecutive victory in the series.

“An official came up to me during the course of the game and made reference to how well our players were handling the business that was going on around the plays,” UW coach Bret Bielema said at his Monday news conference.

Over the past five years, turning the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee into an “entrepreneurial” research university has been touted as an economic “game changer” for Milwaukee. Entrepreneurial UWM has been heralded as the new “driver” of the Milwaukee economy, a commercial “idea hatchery” spawning patents, licenses and business spinoffs that will function as the economic engine for the city and region. The two signature initiatives of UWM entrepreneurialism – a biomedical engineering technology park in Wauwatosa and building a research arm for the Milwaukee 7â??s vision of turning Milwaukee into the “Silicon Valley of water technology”- have been almost universally supported by civic leaders and in the media.

In the process of being interviewed for the job as the womenâ??s track and cross country coach at the University of Wisconsin five years ago, Jim Stintzi was outspoken about the fact his alma mater was lacking in appropriate facilities.

Twenty-eight years ago, Dave McClainâ??s University of Wisconsin football team helped close Memorial Stadium with a 26-21 victory over Big Ten Conference rival Minnesota. The Gophers moved off campus and into the Metrodome beginning with the â??82 season.

The UW-Madison Athletic Department got $12.7 million last year from contracts with Big Ten media, which include ABC, ESPN, CBS and the Big Ten Network, according to an athletics budget report.

The rest of campus got about $2 million from the contract with the Big Ten Network, the result of an arrangement in which UW Athletics gets 70 percent of the revenue, while campus gets 30 percent.

….Business is bad, with the market for Badgers tickets as soft as it has been in recent memory.

“Terrible,” said a scalper named John, who declined to offer his last name but is known to his customers as Ticket JJ. “Itâ??s very, very bad.”

As of a half-hour before game time against the Spartans on Sept. 26 – regarded as the tail end of the high point of sales – none of the eight well-traveled scalpers interviewed for this story had sold a ticket for the $46 face value. And that price doesnâ??t reflect the mandatory annual donation to the BadgerFund required of most seats at Camp Randall. Good seats were selling for as low as $25 through the professionals.

The countdown is now moving faster than an Olympic timing clock.

On Friday, the International Olympic Committee will announce which of four cities receives the bid for the 2016 summer games. Chicago is competing with Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo to land the games.

It had been so long since Minnesota fans enjoyed a true college football experience, many of them probably forgot what it was like.

For 27 years, they endured the Metrodome, with its antiseptic, cloistered environment. In many ways, it was the antithesis of the experiences that make college football unique.

“We’ve played Big Ten football,” Minnesota athletic director Joel Maturi said. “We did not have a Big Ten environment.”

Fridayâ??s decision by the International Olympic Committee will be watched closely in Dane County, from the people who run the Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau, to the people who will host events like mountain biking.

The countdown is now moving faster than an Olympic timing clock.

Friday, the International Olympic Committee will announce which of four cities receives the bid for the 2016 summer games.

UW junior quarterback Scott Tolzien has been named Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week for his four-touchdown performance in the Badgersâ?? victory over Michigan State on Saturday.

Tolzien completed 19-of-31 passes for 243 yards and a career-high four touchdown passes with no interceptions in Wisconsinâ??s 38-30 win. That is the 10th time in school history a UW quarterback has thrown at least four touchdown passes in a game. The last to do so was John Stocco vs. Minnesota on Oct. 14, 2006.

Two of the toughest jobs in the University of Wisconsin Athletic Department in 2009-10 involve the women’s hockey team.

The Badgers are defending NCAA champions and are working on a streak of four consecutive appearances in the national title game.

Maintaining that pace puts a lot of pressure on acting head coach Tracey DeKeyser and whomever is tabbed to replace record-setting goaltender Jessie Vetter.

Thirty-five people were booted from the Badgersâ?? football game Saturday in Madison, UW Police said, and 18 citations, all for alcohol-related violations, were issued.

University of Wisconsin officials are advising fans to keep their carry-on items small as they enter Camp Randall this season.Duffel bags, coolers, strollers, balls flags and banners will not be allowed in, officials said.

We’re told that our life flashes before our eyes just before we die, but Todd Yeagley is proof that it can happen in the midst of drawing a new breath.

Yeagley was born and raised within the confines of the Indiana men’s soccer program, which is as dynastic as they come at the major college level.

Tickets for the Culver’s Camp Randall Hockey Classic continue to move slowly — around 25,000 have been sold — but the inaugural event scheduled for Feb. 6, 2010 made progress on one front Wednesday.

Faceoff times were set for the first outdoor games at Camp Randall. The UW women’s team will face Bemidji State at 2 p.m. The UW men’s team will then take on Michigan at 5 p.m.

Wisconsin is kicking off the Big 10 football season Saturday, but a federal warning for all sports stadiums by the Department of Homeland Security has UW-Madison taking a closer look at security at Camp Randall.

The Big Ten Network won’t have much prime time for the Wisconsin men’s hockey team this season.

BTN officials released a nine-game lineup of telecasts Tuesday. The only live appearance by the Badgers is when they host Michigan in the inaugural Culver’s Camp Randall Classic outdoor game Feb. 6.

The only other BTN exposure for UW will come March 5 when it plays at Minnesota in the second-to-last Western Collegiate Hockey Association game of the regular season. That will be shown on a tape-delayed basis at 10 p.m.

When the bad news was delivered late last month, Brooke Ammerman spent some time wallowing in disappointment before her mood changed for the better.

Ammerman was among 41 candidates invited to try out for a spot on the U.S. women’s hockey team that will play in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia. When roster cuts were announced Aug. 24, the standout center at the University of Wisconsin wasn’t among the surviving 23.

In nine days, Wisconsin residents will know if the “horribly hilly” climbs in western Dane County will put Olympian cyclists to the test in 2016.

The International Olympic Committee is scheduled to choose a host city for the 2016 Olympics on Oct. 2 in Copenhagen. If Chicago is chosen, mountain biking and road cycling events would be held in and around Madison and Mount Horeb.

On the day he announced tailback John Clay had been elevated to the No.â??1 tailback, University of Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema explained the staff was eager to see how the third-year sophomore would respond to the promotion, which was both an opportunity and a challenge.

Only hours before UW took the field against Wofford last week, running backs coach John Settle saw signs in Clay that were so disconcerting he wondered whether to give the start to junior Zach Brown, who had started the first two games of the season.

“I was hoping heâ??d be excited, champing at the bit, ready to go out and attack and show everybody that he deserves to start,” Settle said of Clay. “But I didnâ??t see that excitement. I didnâ??t see the focus once we got to the stadium Saturday morning.

Attention, tweeting college football players: Wisconsin’s coaches may be following you.

Adding a twist to the micro-blogging craze that is Twitter, Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema said Monday he likes to use it to keep tabs on what opposing players are saying.

Nicole Griffin, the University of Wisconsin womenâ??s basketball programâ??s biggest recruiting target, has chosen instead to play for Oklahoma.

Griffin, a 6-foot-6 senior center from three-time WIAA Division 1 champion Milwaukee Vincent, verbally committed to Oklahoma after making her official visit there this past weekend.

That the University of Wisconsin whipped Wofford, an overmatched Football Championship Subdivision opponent, was expected. The final score – 44-14 – Saturday afternoon at Camp Randall Stadium was irrelevant.

To find where Jim Leonhard stands tallest, drive east from Minneapolis on the country road Route 8. Enter Packers country, past fields of corn and oats, past the â??Population 105â? signpost.

In Tony, Wis., Jim Leonhard remains their proudest export

Visitors are left with no doubt as to the identity of Tonyâ??s favorite son: a 5-foot-8 athletic overachiever.

Near the Tony Depot, in the center of this speck of a town in northwest Wisconsin, stop at the billboard that makes Leonhard blush, painted with his likeness and adorned with his college accomplishments. The one that says â??Walk-on to All-American.

Watching his son run downfield as a receiver for the University of Wisconsin this season has been a frantic experience for Al Toon. Toon is more than just a concerned parent.

For eight years, Toon was the do-everything wide-receiver for the Jets after a stellar career at Wisconsin. He took ballet classes, was a ferocious blocker who never spiked the ball after he scored and led the Jets in receptions for six straight seasons.

But Toon’s career was cut short because of a rash of concussions that left him battling vertigo and depression.

The UW Badgers football team pulled out a tough, double overtime victory against Fresno State. Reports indicated that a number of players may have been sick, but played through it. Now, there is concern that younger football plays may try to be tough.

The Badgers are pledging to make every home came this year carbon neutral, an extension of last season’s efforts to make the 2008 homecoming game a net-zeo carbon emitter.

The university is promoting more recycling on site, replacing paper media guides with electronic versions, and buying carbon credits to make up for electricity and emissions.

John Clay, the ball is in your hands.

“What weâ??d like to do is see how he takes the reins,” University of Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema said Monday, “and see where he goes.”

Clayâ??s first steps should come Saturday when UW (2-0) hosts Wofford (1-1) and the redshirt sophomore from Racine Park High School takes the field for the first time as UWâ??s starting tailback.