It’s with great pleasure that we announce the All-Time Roster, featuring the best player at each jersey number in University of Wisconsin football history.
This six-week project, originated by Capital Times football beat writer Jim Polzin, tapped into the expertise of a voting panel that included three-time Rose Bowl champion coach Barry Alvarez and former UW athletic director Pat Richter, as well as a cross-section of local media members who have followed the team extensively.
The plane carrying the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team had arrived late to Miami International airport this past November and any opportunity of making the connecting flight to St. Thomas looked lost.
But there was hope in the form of Andy North, who was on the flight with the team. He quickly and quietly fixed the problem as soon as he got inside the terminal. Amazingly, the plane was waiting for the team when the Badgers arrived at the gate. Every piece of luggage miraculously made it, too.
Bret Bielema will wrap up his third season as the University of Wisconsinâ??s head football coach Saturday, when the Badgers play Florida State in the Champs Sports Bowl.
After going 12-1 in his first year, Bielemaâ??s team dropped to 9-4 last year and 7-5 this season.
Thatâ??s got some fans concerned, along with the impending graduations of 11 senior starters, but former coach and current athletic director Barry Alvarez says the 38-year-old Bielema has proven that he can coach and can produce in big games.
ORLANDO, Fla. â?? Wisconsin Badgers athletic director Barry Alvarez knew what he was getting when he picked Bret Bielema as his successor.
Although two reserves who have not played this season have been declared academically ineligible for the Champs Sports Bowl, University of Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema doesn’t anticipate any additional losses.
“No one in our two-deep is going to be a concern,” Bielema said Monday after UW’s first practice in Orlando in preparation for the game Saturday against Florida State.
Players receive stipends to help with living expenses from USA Hockey and the United States Olympic Committee. Some have part-time jobs; others are continuing their studies.
Tom Osiecki, a longtime Minnesota high school and college coach, serves as the coach. The Olympic coach, however, will be chosen in late January, according to Michele Amidon, the director of womenâ??s hockey operations for USA Hockey. Three candidates are in the running: Harvard Coach Katey Stone, who coached the womenâ??s select team that won the Four Nations Cup; Ohio State Coach Jackie Barto, who directed the national team to a gold medal at the world championship; and Mark Johnson, who has coached Wisconsin to N.C.A.A. championships.
The pain in Aaron Henry’s right knee, pain that ultimately led to a second surgery and his decision to redshirt this season, was often brutal.
“Physically I just wasn’t ready to play,” the University of Wisconsin cornerback said recently.
The pain Henry experienced watching his teammates struggle during a 7-5 regular season was even more unbearable.
Bret Bielema assumed that he was alone with his thoughts — and the soap lather — while showering after the Illinois game, a much-needed 27-17 win, snapping a troubling four-game Big Ten losing streak for the Wisconsin Badgers football team. Bielema was, thus, startled when he heard a voice from what he thought was an empty locker room in the McClain Facility. “Congratulations,” Barry Alvarez offered. “You just became a coach today.”
The University of Wisconsin Athletic Department is trying to build its 2009-10 budget without raising ticket prices for the second straight year.
That may be unrealistic, but UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez believes the attempt must be made given the economic challenges facing many Badgers fans.
“We’re very, very sensitive to ticket increases,” he said this week. “I really don’t want to do it. I hope we can build a budget without having to do it.”
The process is taking place against a backdrop of harsh concerns and stark realities involving the bread-winning UW football program.
If you are having trouble coming up with the money to follow the University of Wisconsin football team to the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Fla., you are not alone.
These are tough economic times and it is reflected in the Badgers’ ticket sales for the bowl game.
Senior associate athletic director Vince Sweeney estimated Wednesday the school would use about 3,000 of its allotted 12,000 tickets by the end of the week. That includes ticket sales to the public and tickets for UW’s traveling party.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — It could be a sign of the economic times.
Badgers’ ticket sales for the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Florida are down sharply from previous bowl games.
Indiana assistant coach Todd Yeagley will be the next men’s soccer coach at the University of Wisconsin.
The Herald-Times newspaper of Bloomington, Ind., reported this morning that Yeagley accepted the position, and a source familiar with the situation confirmed the report.
Wisconsin Badgers running backs coach John Settle didn’t think junior P.J. Hill had any interest in dipping a toe into the NFL waters.
Cody Goloubef will help Canada try to win its fifth straight gold medal at the World Junior Championship.
The Wisconsin Badgers men’s hockey defenseman has made the 22-player Canadian roster for the elite under-20 tournament, which runs Dec. 26-Jan. 5 in Ottawa.
The Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team began the season with low expectations and a chip on its collective shoulder.
Ten wins later, the expectations may have changed, but the chip is still there.
Share the basketball on offense and you keep everyone involved and interested. Play with passion and poise on defense and make foes beat you from the perimeter.
The University of Wisconsin women’s team has followed that plan beautifully through the first month of the season, with the latest example a 67-48 drubbing of rival Marquette on Saturday at the Kohl Center.
The way Bo Ryan broke down his teamâ??s ability to get to the basket Saturday night made the game of basketball seem like basic science. You do X, weâ??ll do Y. Simple cause and effect.
â??Thatâ??s what you build in when you practice, that if teams are going to play the ball a certain way (and) play away from the ball a certain way, you take whatâ??s available,â? the University of Wisconsin coach said after his teamâ??s 77-57 victory over UW-Green Bay at the Kohl Center. â??I thought our guys made some good decisions, Pop (Trevon Hughes) and J-Bo (Jason Bohannon) especially.â?
I’m not the only one who believes the UW student section at the Kohl Center is extremely overrated. Kellis Robinett, a writer from the Idaho State Journal who attended the Badgers’ victory over Idaho State Tuesday night at the Kohl Center, wrote an accurate account about UW fans, and the students in particular, in a recent blog entry.
The Madison Marathon will have new courses in 2009, with all its events starting and finishing at the Alliant Energy Center.
New race director Ryan Richards — who also supervises Ironman Wisconsin — has begun a makeover of the full marathon, half marathon and quarter marathon courses for the May 24 event. The most noticeable change is that the Madison Marathon will abandon its traditional starting point on the Capitol Square, but Richards also aims to flatten out the course while steering runners past several civic landmarks.
Don’t tell Mariah Dunham the women’s basketball rivalry between the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University is tame.
When the UW junior forward checked her cell phone early Monday, she noticed a text message from Marquette senior guard Erin Monfre, a friend and rival from high school.
The message: “Our next game is against you guys. Be ready.”
When the frightening story about Barry Alvarez and one of his former Wisconsin Badgers football players first came to light, I have to admit that my sadness and sympathies were divided.
I felt terrible for Alvarez and his family, whose lives were threatened in a series of telephone messages left at Alvarez’s campus office in recent months.
To know there is someone that angry, that willful, that violent in your life has to shake you to the core.
The freefalling economy might force college sports to bend or drop some opposition to creeping commercialism on campuses. That was the warning Wednesday from Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart, a panelist at the seventh annual IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum’s session on trends in financing and fundraising.
No one was fooling himself after this one.
The University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team won for the seventh time in nine games, but its 60-58 victory over Idaho State on Tuesday night was hardly satisfying.
University of Wisconsin women’s hockey head coach and 1980 gold medal hockey Olympian, Mark Johnson, has been named the recipient of the 2009 Red Smith Award, according to banquet chairman Mike Reese.
It’s official, the UW Madison Badgers will head to Orlando to take on Florida State in the Champs Sports Bowl.
On Monday, fans began looking at travel packages from the university.
In 2006, the Capitol One Bowl Game in Orlando was Coach Barry Alvarez’s last game with the Badgers.
The Badgers, who were the underdogs went on to upset Auburn 24-10.
The Wisconsin Badgers football team has accepted an invitation to play Florida State in the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Fla., on Dec. 27.
The game will be televised by ESPN, with kickoff slotted for 3:30 p.m. Central time.
It didn’t take Buzz Williams long to notch his first signature victory as Marquette University’s coach.
Just eight games into his tenure as the school’s 16th head man, Williams led his Golden Eagles to a 61-58 triumph over the University of Wisconsin on Saturday night at the Bradley Center in the 115th meeting between the instate rivals.
University of Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema, with a 28-10 record in three seasons, and Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, with a 381-123-4 record in 43 seasons, are at opposite ends of the coaching spectrum.
It’s no surprise they have different views of their upcoming meeting in the 2008 Champs Sports Bowl.
A man accused of making death threats to U-W Athletic Director Barry Alvarez has been ordered to take a mental competency exam. Leonard Taylor was arrested in Indiana last Friday. He made his first court appearance in Dane County on Thursday, on charges of stalking and telephone harassment.
University of Wisconsin Police on Friday released the surveillance video from the October 11 game at Camp Randall Stadium against Penn State that shows a dispute with a fan that ultimately resulted in tasering.
It shows Margaret Hiebing sitting in the aisle of Section U, and police asking her to find a seat. The incident lasted about ten minutes ten minutes.
Lisa Stone’s team built an early double-digit lead with an impressive shooting display.
Then after the University of Wisconsin shooters turned as icy as the air outside the Kohl Center Thursday night, the Badgers re-established control with sound, suffocating defense.
The result was a 61-52 victory over Virginia Tech in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
This isn’t the biggest case I’ve brought before the court of public opinion, but it’s been bugging me for a while, so here goes:
Why doesn’t the most dominant, most successful sports program at the University of Wisconsin draw more of an audience?
The women’s hockey team has been to three straight NCAA title games, winning championships in 2005-06 and ’06-07.
Former University of Wisconsin football player Leonard Taylor, 32, was in court Thursday on charges of stalking and telephone harassment after allegedly threatening to kill UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez and his family last week. As expected, Taylor was ordered to undergo a mental competency examination.
Looking flat on offense from the start against a determined UW-Milwaukee team, the Badgers women’s basketball team eventually built a 16-point lead in the second half but blew it all because they stopped playing effective defense.
They needed an NBA-range three-pointer from guard Alyssa Karel in the final seconds of the first overtime to say alive.
They finally prevailed, 71-69, in two overtimes Tuesday night at the Kohl Center when UWM’s Lindsay Laur failed to get off a potential winning three pointer before time expired.
Charter Communications will be breathing a big sigh of relief should the University of Wisconsin football team be invited to the Champs Sports Bowl rather than the Insight Bowl, as now appears to be likely.
In a series of voice mails to the Athletic Department last week, former Badger football player Leonard J. Taylor Jr., who has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, threatened the lives of UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez and professional tennis player Maria Sharapova, according to a criminal complaint.
Wisconsin’s Janelle Gabrielsen and Elle Ohlander were named Monday to the Big Ten Conference All-Freshman volleyball team. It was the first time that two Badgers landed on the rookie team and brings the all-time UW all-freshman honorees to 10.
A man has been charged with stalking former Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez and tennis superstar Maria Sharapova.
A former Badger football player was charged Monday with threatening to kill University of Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez and his family in a series of at least 29 voicemails left last week.
Former University of Wisconsin football player Leonard Taylor made death threats against UW-Madison Athletic Director Barry Alvarez and professional tennis star Maria Sharapova in dozens of voice mail messages left at the Athletic Department during the past week, according to a criminal complaint against Taylor that was released today.
A former University of Wisconsin football player was charged Monday with threatening athletic director Barry Alvarez, tennis star Maria Sharapova and their families.
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Leonard Taylor Jr., 32, of Indianapolis, faces one felony stalking count and one misdemeanor count of telephone harassment. Online court records didn’t list an attorney for Taylor. His father told police Taylor has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and hasn’t taken his medication for three months, according to the criminal complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court.
A former University of Wisconsin football player has been charged with threatening the lives of former Badger coach Barry Alvarez and tennis star Maria Sharapova.
Leonard Taylor Jr., 32, of Indianapolis, faces one felony count of stalking and one misdemeanor count of telephone harassment.
BLACKSBURG, Va. — Guess again if you think anybody connected with the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team is feeling sorry for themselves because the Badgers are on the road again for a Big Ten/ACC Challenge game.
The Badgers certainly got skewered by Big Ten Conference officials, who scheduled them to play talented Virginia Tech here Monday night for their sixth road contest in the 10-year history of the Challenge. No other Big Ten team has played more Challenge games on the road.
A former Badger football player was arrested Friday for allegedly placing threatening phone calls to the UW Athletic Department.
Former University of Wisconsin football player Leonard J. Taylor, jailed after allegedly threatening to kill Athletic Director Barry Alvarez and his family, was diagnosed with mental illnesses several years ago and spent time in the Mendota Mental Health Institute, court records show.
The University of Wisconsin Police Department said Sunday a former Badger football player is in custody in Indianapolis after he made concerning phone calls to UW officials, prompting a police response in Madison.
A former Wisconsin football player accused of making threatening phone calls to a UW-Madison athletic department employee was arrested in Indiana Friday.
Leonard Taylor, 32, was taken into custody by police in Indianapolis.
Taylor was a defensive back for the Badgers from 1995 to 1998. He then briefly played on the Madison Mad Dogs professional indoor football team.
University of Wisconsin-Madison police are telling anyone who spots former UW-Madison football player Leonard J. Taylor to immediately alert authorities because of threatening phone calls he allegedly made to an athletic department employee.
The beat builds slowly after Spud Davis puts on the headphones. Eminem fills his ears, even though he’s not that much of a hip-hop fan.
The lyrics to “Till I Collapse” start to come in, first with the enigmatic rapper narrating about how you can feel tired and feel like you want to give up, but how you have to find inner strength and not be a quitter.
Videotape obtained by 27 News of a woman fan who was subjected to a taser during a Badger football game suggests the incident created chaos.
Ron Dayne isn’t playing in the National Football League at the moment, but he’s still a huge star in the eyes of thousands of University of Wisconsin Badger fans, a couple of hundred of who turned out Monday evening at University Bookstore at Hilldale to have him sign all manner of paraphernalia.
The Kohl Center gets new lighting — with a high tech twist. UW Madison faculty member Steve Feren helped design the new lights, twelve separate lighted sculptures. “The actual lighting will be very active, very colorful and animated,” says Feren. “It will fit in with the sort of celebratory activity that goes on at the the Kohl Center.”
UW-Madison students and alumni and members of the UW Marching Band gathered to celebrate the last Badger Bash at Union South before the Badgers faced off against Cal Poly Saturday.
Badger fans likely remember the March 5, 2000, game when the UW men’s basketball team beat the Indiana Hoosiers by three points to keep their NCAA tournament hopes alive. The Badgers went on to make it to the Final Four.
This was Wisconsin basketball.
Two days after the Badgers needed overtime to overcome dreadful shooting and sloppy play to beat Iona, they played better defense, took better care of the ball and improved their shooting to score a 64-49 victory over San Diego Sunday night at the Paradise Jam tournament
The football season’s results leave UW looking at playing in either the Champs Sports Bowl (Dec. 27, Orlando, Fla.) or the Insight Bowl (Dec. 31, Tempe, Ariz.).
The University of Wisconsin football Badgers became bowl eligible November 15 with their comeback win over border rival Minnesota.
But a tough economy coupled with a disappointing season â?? which ended Saturday with a close overtime win over the non-conference Cal Poly Mustangs â?? likely means that less Badger fans will travel to see the Badgers’ bowl appearance.
The UW Alumni Association acknowledges that fewer fans are expected to go bowling with Bucky. “I think we all have to recognize that the economy has certainly slowed things down,” said Paula Bonner, president of the UW Alumni Association.
The Badger/Cal Poly game on Saturday was not only Wisconsin’s final regular-season game but also the final Badger Bash at the current Union South on the UW campus.
On Saturday Badger fans at the Badger Bash celebrated with the usual beer, brats, and music while also bidding a final farewell to the Union South they’ve come to know and love.
A Badger tradition is taking a hiatus from its usual spot on campus.
Saturday afternoon’s Badger Bash was the last pregame party at Union South for quite a while. The building, which opened in 1971, will be torn down at the end of this school year.
Dear Editor:
As an orthopedic surgeon and former longtime team physician for Madison West and La Follette high schools, I am extremely pleased to see the cautious attitude of the physicians and trainers for the University of Wisconsin athletic programs now taken with their head-injured athletes.
